HTTYD 2: Starring Astrid Hofferson
by Maexwell
Summary: We all know what happened when Drago Bludvist and his dragon army raged war against the brave vikings of Berk. But how did Astrid perceive all of this? And what happened to her while Hiccup met his mother? Here's the answer! HTTYD 2 from Astrid's POV! ASTRID IS BACK FOR MORE! FINAL CHAPTER IS ONLINE!
1. This, is Berk!

**Hi my fellow fanfic lovers. This will be my first try on a HTTYD themed fanfiction. I'll focus on the events of the original 2****nd**** movie of How To Train Your Dragon, BUT this time round, Astrid's the star.**

**That's right folks, this fanfic will tell the story of HTTYD 2 from Astrid's point of view.**

**Alright, without further ado, let's get this Introduction on the way :)**

**Disclaimer: I do NOT own anything of the HTTYD franchise. This fanfiction is a tribute to the damn fine work the whole team did on both movies.**

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"_**This... is Berk. The best kept secret this side of, well, anywhere. Granted, it may not look like much, but this wet heap of rock packs more than a few surprises. Life here is amazing. Just not for the faint of see, where most folks enjoy hobbies like whittling or needlepoint, we Berkians prefer... a little something we like to call-"**_

"**DRAGON RACING!"**

My blue eyes followed Fishlegs and his Gronckle Meatlug, who just scooped up another Sheep, or, like I call it nowadays, another point. We were in the middle of another fiercely fought Dragon race and I was lacking behind the twins by six points. How could this happen you ask? How is it possible that I, the great Astrid Hofferson, lack behind the dorkly duo of Ruffnut and Tuffnut? My gaze wandered and became deeply annoyed.

Snotlout, riding his Monstrous Nightmare Hookfang, had just side-checked Fishleg to steal the ball-, sheep, whatever. He turned around with that smug grin of this and cried "HO-HO! I'm sorry, Fishlegs! Did you want that?"

I urged Stormfly forward because I knew full well what was going to happen now. Hookfang slowed down by unfolding his wings and flew next to the twins, who rode their Hideous Zippleback, Barf and Belch. Snotlout tossed the sheep towards Ruffnut, who caught it and had Barf spew some of his highly flammable gas. The Zippleback picked up speed and I could hear Tuffnut shout: "Let's blew this place, Belch!"

Upon ignition the gas exploded and threw Snotlout off course. I managed to overtake Snotlout, but unfortunately I couldn't keep Ruffnut from scoring another point.

'Geez that stupid Snotlout!' I thought and gritted my teeth.

The dragons soared through the stadium, ready for the next round, and by Thor, I wouldn't allow the twins to win this race. But first things first, I urged Stormfly to rise above Hookfang. I slipped out of my saddle and held on with one of my arms. My other arm, or rather fist, smacked Snotlout's helmet.

The impact nearly threw him off his saddle. 'Ah, so close...' I thought. "What are you doing, Snotlout?! They're gonna win now!" I shouted at him. He turned his head towards me, another of his excuses on the lips. "She's my princess, whatever she wants, she gets!" I gasped "Ruffnut?! Didn't she try to _bury you alive?_". "Only for a few hours!" he replied in all seriousness.

_**"Now, dragons used to be a bit of a problem here, but that was five years ago. Now they've all moved in! And really, why wouldn't they? We have custom stables, all-you-can-eat feeding stations, a full-service dragon wash, even top-of-the-line fire prevention, if I do say so, myself."**_

Just as I recalled all the new inventions that had Hiccup created over the past five years, I saw a Baby Gronckle "sneeze" a house on fire. I sighed and took the little detour to cut the rope of the fire prevention system, which caused a whole bucket worth of water to extinguish the flames. I re-entered the race just in time to hear the horn sound loudly, the signal for the last lap and-

"The Black Sheep! Come on, Stormfly! We can still win this thing!"

I took the lead and raced forward.

"Whoooo-hoooo"

Behind me I could hear Tuffnut scream "It's cool, it's cool, it's cool" and I couldn't agree more, Dragon racing was beyond cool!

Suddenly the black sheep appeared in front of me and I urged Stormfly upwards to intercept it "Up, up, up, up, up, up!"

Seconds before Stormfly could seize the sheep, Meatlug nabbed it with a speed I didn't think her being capable of.

"NO!" I cried frustrated

"YES! Good job, Meatlug!" Fishlegs was obviously proud to have prevented me from getting the sheep and I admit that I was slightly impressed.

'It's not over yet, buddy' I thought and kept chasing after him.

My tiny bit of admiration towards Fishlegs vanished instantly as I saw him tossing the black sheep towards Ruffnut. "Here ya go, Darling! _**Mine's **_worth ten!"

'Aw c'mon, you gotta be shitting me!' Oh, yeah, I present to you the sole reason why I, the great Astrid Hofferson, was lacking behind the twins.

I flew next to Snotlout "You guys are fighting for Ruffnut?" I asked, astonished.

I heard Ruffnut scream "I'm totally winning!". She had Barf ram into Meatlug, which cause Fishlegs to spin uncontrollably. I barely dodged as he slammed into Snotlout, sending them both well off course.

I raced after the twins and saw my chance.

Ruffnut and Tuffnut had just started arguing, pulling the black sheep back and forth without paying attention to the rear.

'All good things come from above' I thought and had Stormfly approach the twins from behind, while I surfed on her back. I jumped upon the Zippleback's back and ran along it's spine towards the twins. I grabbed the sheep, yanked it from their hands and jumped off with a somersault, safely landing on Stormfly. "Gotcha! Ha-ha!" I shouted and raced towards the goals. The vikings cheers were deafening.

Before I could score, however, Meatlug slammed into Stormfly and sent us tumbling sideways. In front of me Snotlout appeared, wielding an iron hammer "A-ha, excuse me!" 'So bothersome...' I thought before shouting "Stormfly!" and urging my dragon into a steep dive. I could hear the hammer hitting Fishlegs in the face. 'Serves your right!'

Stormfly had trouble regaining her balance, but we managed with some spirals and only grazed the water down below. We kept spiralling and with a trained eye I slammed the Sheep into my goal.

I could hear Stoick's voice booming through the arena "That's thirteen! Astrid takes the game!"

I stood up on Stormfly, raising my hands, and cheered "Yeah! Ooh-ooh!" I did it! I actually managed to win the race even though it basically was me vs everyone else.

"_**Yep. Berk is pretty much perfect. All of Hiccup's hard work has payed off. And it's a good thing, too, because with Vikings on the backs of dragons, the world just got a whole lot bigger."**_

Speaking of Hiccup, I started to wonder where he flew off to this time, but now was the time to celebrate! I made Stormfly take some victory laps around the stadium as I enjoyed the standing ovations brushing over me.

Little I knew about the terrible things to come...

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**That's it, folks. I hope you like my short introduction. Now I'd like to ask of you to review and/or mail me your thoughts about it and whether you'd be interested in reading more of it. I appreciate any kind of critique :) Stay tuned!**


	2. Chief or what?

**Hi folks :)**

**First of all I'd like to thank all of you for reading, reviewing, following and favoring my story.**

**I hope all of you will enjoy the first real chapter of this fanfic. As you can see, I decided to go with rather short chapters, but that just means you'll have lots of chapters to look forward to :P And of course the updates will come a lot faster this way as well.**

**Now, please enjoy reading~  
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After our glorious victory I took Stormfly for a quick dip in the lake down in the forest cove, where Hiccup found the wounded Toothless about 5 years ago. I cleaned my face from the blue colour I wore during the race, matching the blue-orange stripes, I had drawn on Stormfly. While brushing Stormfly's scales I took the leisure to think about the past. It nearly had been five years, since Hiccup and Toothless managed to defeat the six-eyed monster, better known as the Red Death. Their triumph also ended the century-long war between vikings and dragons and rang the bell for a whole new chapter in all our lives. Lost in thought, I crawled Stormfly's chin. Almost every single viking on Berk now had his very own dragon. The years passed by, and while I had trained and perfected my dragon racing, my restless boyfriend Hiccup had spent most of his freetime with exploring new and uncharted islands.

'It's almost as if... he's desperately searching for something. If only I could help him find it, whatever it may be.'

Stormfly's squawk interrupted my thoughts. She was eager to start searching for her best friend, well, second best if I counted myself in. Toothless, the only Night Fury on Berk and maybe the whole world. After I started dating Hiccup about four and a half years ago, Stormfly and Toothless saw one another more frequently as well and soon became inseparable. She started nudging me and I had to laugh about her eagerness.

"Alright, alright, girl, I got it already!"

It's not like I was any less eager to start searching for Toothless, because finding him also meant finding my goofy, little Hiccup. Fortunately my girl was a Deadly Nadder, a dragon of the Tracker class. I patted down my pockets until I found a litte piece of cloth. I secretly ripped it off of Hiccup's flight suit, for this kind of situation. Stormfly only had to sniff at it for a moment and almost instantly picked up Hiccup's scent. I quickly mounted her and with a whoop of joy we soared into the vast sky.

"Wooo-hooo, faster girl! Let's find those slackers!" I screamed and with the help of strong tailwinds we managed to set a new speed record.

Regardless of the incredily fast pace it still almost took 2 hours to reach the island. Again I was astonished by how good a Deadly Nadder's tracking ability was. Stormfly had absolutley no trouble finding Hiccup even though the winds were blowing fiercly above the sea. She squawked in anticipation when she could make out Toothless on the little island. My girl was a bit too excited and almost messed up the landing, kicking up some dirt with her claws.

"Woah, easy there, girl!" I exclaimed.

Upon landing I could see Hiccup kneeling at the edge of the cliff. Toothless was obviously delighted to see Stormfly, because he came jumping towards us, with his tongue lolling. As I slipped off my saddle, I could hear Hiccup say "Afternoon, Milady. Where have you been?" I leisurely pulled back my hood, briefly crawling Toothless' chin as a greeting. I couldn't help a light giggle when I saw how exuberantly the dragons were greeting one another. 'These are definitely two of kind'.

I strode over to Hiccup and answered his question, purposely sounding a bit bored by it.

"Oh, winning races. What else?"

Again he beat me to it. He knew full well were I had been. I was slightly offended by his ignorance, but I didn't want to start an argument over something like that. Hiccup has always been a little dreamer, lost in thought more frequently than any other viking I knew. This probably was a trait he inherited from his mom. He definitely hadn't gotten it from his Dad, Stoick the Vast, chief of Berk and probably the most straight-forward and down-to-earth person in existence.

"Real question is, where have _you_ been?" I asked while sitting down next to him, putting one hand on his shoulder.

"Avoiding my Dad." By the tone of his voice I could tell that he was still upset, maybe he even came here to pout, which was kinda cute.

In my best understanding-girlfriend-voice I replied "Oh, no. What happened now?"

He faced me and I could feel his deep green eyes piercing my very soul. 'Woah, where did that thought come from?'

While he began to complain I took the pen from him and tried to continue his drawing. Then I remembered that I really sucked at this creative kind of thing, so I contended myself with comparing his map and the actual island.

"Oh, you're gonna- you're gonna love this. I wake up, the sun is shining, Terrible Terrors are singing on the rooftop, I saunter down to breakfast thinking all is right in the world and I get:"

He suddenly rose and started to imitate his father. "Son, we need to talk." I wanted to burst into laughter, but then I got and even better idea. I was about to administer him some of his own medicine.

"Not now, Dad. I've got a whole day of goofing off to get started." I said in my best let's-impersonate-hiccup-voice, while moving my shoulders wildly.

We both had to laugh. "Okay, first of all, I-I don't sound like that, who- what is this character? And second, what is that thing you're doing with my shoulders?"

I repeated the move I had seen Hiccup do more than a thousand times. He usually did it when he was eager to make a point.

He chuckled and continued "A very flattering impersonation, anyway he goes: You're the pride of Berk, son. And I couldn't be prouder!"

I answered while flailing my arms like crazy, another thing Hiccup did frequently. Not that he realized. Isn't ignorance a bliss? "Ah, thanks, Dad! I'm pretty impressed with myself, too!"

Again we shared a short laugh "When have I ever done that with my hands?" he said, flailing his arms like I just did. Told ya, didn't it?

"You just did!" I laughed.

"Ah-kay" he sighed in acceptance and knelt beside me, forcing my arms, which I just started to flail again, to stay put "Just hold still. Very serious." I nodded with a playfully serious expression on my face.

He continued imitating his father. "You're all grown up. And since no chief could ask for a better successor, I've decided-"

"To make your chief!" I blurted. "Oh, my gods! Hiccup that's AMAZING!" I was truly happy and as most of you know by now, I like to underline my feelings rather physically. I punched Hiccup's chest, very softly of course, but he still whimpered and when the fin of his flight suit popped out, I just had to laugh.

Hiccup instantly started complaining "You're going to wear out the spring coil. The calibration is very sensitive." Truth to be told it wasn't the first time I had _accidently _hit the button of his suit. Was I feeling bad because of it? What do _you_ think? In this moment, Forseti, the god of justice, seemingly saw it fit to act and both of us were knocked down by Stormfly and Toothless, who apparently were playing tag.

I stood up and took Hiccup's arm, easily lifting him from the ground. 'Geez, I'll have to force feed him someday.'

"Yeah, so... This is what I'm dealing with." He sounded rather gloomy, but I was eager to hear more about the conversation now.

"What'd you tell him?"

"I-I didn't. By the time he turned around I was gone."

I walked past him and picked up his sketch book. "Huh, well... that's a lot of responsibility. The map will have to wait, for sure..."

While talking I handed him the book and passed him by again.

"... and I'll need to fly Toothless since you'll be too busy, but..." I suddenly fell silent as I realized what I had just said. The two of them were inseparable, closer than even brothers, how would Hiccup feel if he had to reduce their time together to a minimum?

His gaze alone told me. His brows were drooping and his green eyes seemed rather watery. I felt a tug in my heart seeing him like this.

"I-It's not me, Astrid, all those speeches and planning and running the village, that's _his_ thing."

I tried to give the whole matter a more positive perspective, mainly trying to cheer him up.

"I think you're missing the point. I mean, Chief. What an honor. _I'd _be pretty excited."

Unfortunately that didn't seem to do the trick, because he just replied

"I'm not like you. You know exactly who you are, and you've always have. But, me? I'm still looking. I know that I'm not my father, and I've never met my mother, so... what does that make me?"

While talking he picked up the mask of his flight suit and I could hear that this whole matter was really getting him down. He sat on the edge of the cliff, facing the sea. I gently sat down beside him 'Nope, no more tumbling down random cliffs this week.' and started twirling his auburn hair.

"What you're searching for isn't out there, Hiccup." I gently placed my hand on his chest "It's in here. Maybe you just don't see it yet." I tenderly kissed his cheek, still trying to comfort him, but instantly pulled back, grimacing. 'Ugh, yuck! Dragon-saliva-flavored Hiccup.'

I was busy wiping my mouth in disgust when Hiccup said "Maybe. But, you know, there _is_ something out there."

'Here we go again' I thought. 'He's still convinced that something's waiting for him out there. Oh, I wish he'd just give it up already...' I sighed briefly, about to give him another lecture about purpose and prospect. "Hiccup..." But I didn't manage to do so. Yup, too bad, I can give damn fine lectures, just ask Snotlout.

Hiccup had grabbed my chin, pointing me straight ahead, where I could see a huge cloud of smoke rising in the distance. I squinted slightly. "By the gods." I murmered "What could that be?"

Suddenly my boyfriend's eyes became bright with curiosity. 'Oh, dear.' I thought, but of course I knew that side of him, and I loved it as much as anything else about him. Although there had been plenty occassions where his curiosity had gotten us into trouble. 'Please, Odin, just this once, let nothing bad happen.' In retrospect I had more than enough reason to kick the father of the gods' butt, if I ever met him.

"Only one way to find out, eh?" said Hiccup with that goofy grin on his face.

I sighed, masking my own curiosity. Smoke indicated fire, and fire indicated _dragons_. I was eager to see what kind of dragons we might be able to find so far from Berk. In silent agreement we fetched our scaly friends, who, by now, were playing fetching the stick, with a _trunk_. Neither Stormfly, nor Toothless were happy about the time out and my girl was really sulky.

'Never take a Nadder's playmate/-thing' I reminded myself.

I mounted Stormfly and we soared into the sky, following Hiccup and Toothless.

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**That's it! I know it's just another few scenes, but you should get a pretty good idea about how I'm going to write this story. I really hope you enjoyed the chapter** and I'm happy about every single review, even if it's just some random shoutout or harsh critique (you can only improve by knowing your flaws after all :D)**  
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	3. Eret, Son of Eret

**Hi guys :)**

**Thanks so much for reviewing, favoring and following my story. I'm really grateful ^_^  
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**I hope you'll enjoy the newest chapter and don't worry, the next one will definitely be longer.**

**Enjoy~**

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We glided above the treetops of a beautiful autumn forest and I enjoyed being airborne alongside Hiccup. He generally made everything so much more enjoyable. But don't you dare tell him! He'd gloat over it forever. To be honest, I had thought about a possible future with him. I mean, he's my best friend, beside Stormfly, and I'm genuinely in love with him, so it would make perfect sense. Unfortunately he seemingly had never thought about it, I mean, he had never addressed the topic. Then again, neither had I. It's rather difficult to confront Hiccup with certain topics. 'Isn't that right, Stoick?' If he already bolted, when his father as much as mentioned the word _Chief_, how would he react to words like _You_ and _Me_ and _Marriage_ and _pretty please_? I sighed lightly. Suddenly, the scene changed rather drastically, which brought me back down to earth. Not _literally_, sillies! We had reached the place, where the huge cloud of smoke stemmed from. Thousands of trees, reduced to charcoal.

The sight of these charred trunks, surrounded by whitish-grey smoke and accompanied by an eerie silence, was rather creepy. The smoke was still warm, but I couldn't make out even the tiniest flame. The fire had been extinguished in an instant, which explained why only half the forest had been reduced to this sorry state. The culprit was nowhere to be seen. 'How weird.' I thought, 'Only the Typhoomerang should be able to extinguish a fire like this, but...' I glanced over the huge area of burnt trees and I shook my head in disbelief. 'Not even a Typhoomerang could cover all of this.' My curiosity diminished. Whoever had done this, was incredibly powerful and I started to doubt that looking for the culprit was such a good idea.

We were flying in our usual formation. Hiccup was flying relatively low, scouting the ground for possible threats, while I followed him at greater height, watching out for airborne enemies. This usually worked pretty well, but Hiccup seemed to be lost in thought. I sighed and henceforth covered both, sky and ground. Lately, my boyfriend had done a lot of thinking and I dreaded the conclusion he might come to. He felt cornered by his father, about this whole chief business, fearing the loss of his freedom. 'What if he leaves for good one day? That'd be...' I shuddered and abolished the thought. It was too painful to even imagine it. But what would he choose, if he were to choose? Freedom or love? I didn't want to leave Berk, my whole family lived there, since... ever, but I couldn't just let him go either. 'Maybe I'm just overthinking this, but, then again...' I groaned and chided myself 'Aaargh, just stop thinking about it already...' Stormfly squawked in compassion and I gently patted her neck. "Thanks, girl."

When we reached a river that meandered through the forest, I decided to break the formation and catch up with Hiccup. We followed the river course and we found ourselves on the ocean. Our dragons instantly stopped and kept flying on the spot. I could feel Stormly tense up and I couldn't help gasping at the intangible sight before my very eyes. A huge, icy construct towered over the sea's surface. This huge chunck of ice had razor-sharp icicles as a topping and was strewn with broken wood. Definitely not my favorite flavour. Hundreds of questions lept in my mind. Who did this? How did he do that? Why did he do that?

"Whoa." Hearing Hiccup's voice so suddenly kinda startled me. He faced me, with a big question mark on his face, so I signaled him that I didn't know what to make of all this either, by shaking my head and lifting my shoulders ever so lightly.

"Stay close." was his reply and he urged Toothless closer towards the icy construct. 'You don't have to tell me', I thought. 'Otherwise I wouldn't be able to look out for you.' We circled the construct in silence. On closer inspection the broken wood once had the shape of a building or... a ship maybe? My senses were sharpened to the max, that's why I the spotted the ship, that anchored closely to the ice, first.

"Hiccup!" I hissed, trying to not give away our presence just yet, but seconds later I could hear an unfamiliar voice scream "FIRE!". Hiccup managed to dodge the missile, but, since my view was blocked, I saw it too late. I could hear Hiccup's warning, but it was too late to evade. The net slammed into Stormfly and we immediatly spiralled down towards the sea. I screamed and tried to rip the net with my bare hands, but I was thrown off my girl due to rotation.

My fall was pretty fast and I knew that if I were to hit the surface with this speed, I'd definitively die. "HICCUP!", I cried at the top of my lungs and prayed to the gods. At the last possible moment I was scooped up by Toothless. 'Thanks, you useful reptile' I thought.

When I saw my poor girl being pinned down and tied up, the anger rose inside me. Hiccup screamed "STOP!" and upon landing, I called out to Stormfly. "What are you doing?!", I shouted. Toothless bared his fangs and growled, while Hiccup drew his self-made Zipple-Sword. Terrible name, I know. The flame around its blade was a lot more terrible though, for its enemies. For want of a weapon, I picked up a piece of wood. Doesn't sound impressive? Remember, I could easily beat all of you with a mere spoon! I raised my stick of death above my head and glared at the men in front of us, who seemed to fear Hiccup's flammable sword more than my stick. Bad mistake.

"Back again?" asked a man with black hair and a vest made of fur. He wore a weird mark on this chin, but that wasn't the worst. He _stood_ on Stormfly, pinning her head down with his feet. 'How dare he?!' "That _is_ a Night Fury. I thought they were all gone for good." he continued and I rose my stick even higher, ready to charge at this despicable bunch, but Hiccup signaled me to stand down.

'Uff, again with his non-violent approach. I'm no good at non-violent.'

The black-haired man, who appeared to be the boss of these good-for-nothings, was still talking "Looks like our luck's turned for the better, lads. Don't think Drago has one of _those_ in his dragon army."

His words didn't make much sense to me. "Dragon army?" I asked, sounding more anxious than I wanted.

Hiccup lowered his sword and said "Look, we don't want any trouble.", but the man just laughed

"Ha! You should have thought of that before you stole all of our dragons and blasted our fort to bits." He pointed towards the remains of their "fort" in an extra dramatical way.

'Start to make some sense, will ya?!' If it weren't for Stormfly still being in danger, I would've mopped the floor with them already. "What are you... talking about?", I asked, sounding exactly as pissed as intended.

"You think _we_ did this?" asked Hiccup, while pointing towards the broken fort.

"Ha. Dragon trapping is hard enough work as it is without do-gooder Dragon Riders sneaking in to rescue them."

Hiccup faced me, obviously as confused as I was. "What do-gooder-", he stopped and looked back at the black-haired man "There are other Dragon Riders?"

"You mean, other than your thieving friend from last night? You tell me. You may have an ice-spitting dragon on your side but I still have a quoter to fill. How'd you suppose we explain this to Drago Bludvist?" the man replied, walking amidst his companions.

"Drago What-vist? Does _anything_ you say make sense?" was Hiccup's answer and he already sounded like his usual dorky self again. 'Don't let your guard down yet!' I thought and tried to convey the message with my eyes.

Now two other men rose to speak. "He's expecting a new shipment of dragons for his army by tomorrow." said one, and the other added "And Drago don't take well to excuses."

Their boss signaled them to hush and exposed a scar on his chest. "This is what he gave me last time I showed up empty handed.

I exchanged looks with Hiccup and grimaced in disgust. Not because of the scar, we vikings took pride in our scars, but because of the horrible design. 'This Drago Bludvist sucks at scarring.'

"He promised to be far less understanding in the future." added the stranger.

Hiccup was still looking for a way to solve this problem peacefully. "Alright, we don't know anything about a dragon thief or an ice-spitting dragon... or your lunatic boss and his dragon army, okay? Just give us back our dragon and we'll go, strange, hostile person whom we've never met."

The stranger chuckled "Oh, where are my manners? Ha, I'm Eret, son of Eret. Finest dragon trapper alive, after all it's not just anyone who can capture a Night Fury."

He drew a knife while talking and pointed its blade towards Toothless. I tensed up, ready to shed some blood if necessary. Toothless growled angrily.

"And this is Toothless, he says we're going. _Now_." said Hiccup, finally sounding more resolute.

Eret laughed and replied "They all say that. Rush 'em, lads!"

The first one to act was Toothless, who fired at one of the large icicles hanging above us. The spear of ice came crushing down and the dragon trappers jumped away to avoid being crushed. We made good use of the time Toothless had bought us. Hiccup fired up his sword and cut the ropes, which bound Stormfly. I untangled her from the net and urged her to run- err fly away.

"Stormfly, come on! Go! Go!"

I ran next to her and swung myself into the saddle as she lifted off the ground. I glanced back briefly and saw that Hiccup had safely mounted Toothless and was right flying right behind me.

Eret bellowed in anger "You will _never_ hold onto those dragons! You hear me?! Drago is coming for them all!"

'Oh we'll see about that, you son of a bit- _Eret' _I thought.

Without delay we set course towards Berk. I was relieved that we managed to escape unscathed, but I really regretted not having kicked some butts. I really wanted to discuss what had just happened with Hiccup, but the strong winds above the sea made all conversation impossible. Furthermore we had to report back to Stoick immediatly. Neither of us liked the sound of a hostile dragon army and I had a sense of foreboding that I just couldn't explain...

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**I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter :)**

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	4. They called him Peacemaker

**Wow, the story reached over 700 views from more than 300 different people! Thanks so much for that ^_^ And of course thanks for reviewing, favoring and following my fanfic.**

**I promised that the next chapter would be longer and it's almost twice the length of the first two! Also, there are more self-written scenes in it this time.**

**Please enjoy!  
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We reached Berk after a tiring two-hour flight. Upon landing in front of Gobber's forge we were greeted by cheering vikings. Well, I did say _we_, but most of those cheers were meant for Hiccup, who kinda became famous after defeating the Red Death. It wasn't easy to enjoy some togetherness with him, I tell ya! Stoick's voice boomed above everyone elses', as usual.

"Ha-ha-ha, there he is, the Pride of Berk!"

Hiccup slipped out of his saddle and hurriedly marched over to his father. Gobber was standing next to Stoick and had apparently just fixed some teeth of a Hideous Zippleback. Good ol' Gobber, half the amount of arms and legs, but twice the heart. Although some of his remarks were plain annoying and often had some pretty aweful timing, we'd definitely have missed something if he hadn't been around. He greeted Hiccup with "Look who's finally decided to show up for work", trying to hit him jokingly.

I dismounted Stormfly and leisurely walked up to the food storage, where I snatched some fish for Toothless and lots of chicken legs for Stormfly. Chicken? Yep, that's right. True, most dragons fancy fish and my girl is no exception, however, she'd choose chicken over fish anytime. I shouldered the basket and returned to the plaza in front of the forge. Stormfly and Toothless could smell the "snack" and kept nudging me from both sides. "Heeeey, stop it you two!" I chided them and emptied the basket on the spot. Toothless sniffed at the chicken, but Stormfly squawked and almost inhaled all of it in an instant. 'Whew, that's probably another record', I thought, a smile playing on my lips.

Hiccup apparently had a hard time gaining his father's attention, because I could see his flailing arms even from my spot in _front_ of the forge. 'One of these days he'll just take off without Toothless'. When I entered the forge I could hear Gobber talking "Oh, really? Your Night Fury and Deadly Nadder didn't bring them cheering to the rooftops?" 'Actually they did' I thought, chuckling at how close to the truth Gobber's question came.

Hiccup turned towards Gobber and replied "No, this was different. Not the standard run for the hills ho-ha I've come to enjoy. These guys were trappers... dragon trappers."

I butted in and enthusiastically said "You should've seen their fort, all blown apart and stuck in giant spikes of ice, it was weird!"

And by weird I meant _awesome_! After escaping from the dragon hunters unscathed my curiosity inflamed anew. I mean, c'mon, an ice-spitting dragon that could easily bust an entire fort? A-W-E-S-O-M-E! After some thinking I had come to the conclusion that this dragon had to be responsible for extinguishing the forest fire, although I wasn't sure if it also had caused the fire in the first place. Could there be a dragon able to spew ice _and _fire?

Hiccup looked me in the eyes and said "I've never seen anything like it..."

'Damn right you haven't! There's only one me after all. And don't call me "it"!'

"...a-and worst of all they thought we did it!"

Gobber fixed a brush on his artificial arm and started grooming his beard. "Ya know, you two are going to get yourselves in serious trouble one of these days. Not everyone appreciates this way of life."

'One of these days!? Ha, oh dear Gobber, if only you knew..." I thought with some remorse. Hiccup and I had agreed to keep most of the trouble, we _already had_ run into, a secret.

"Gobber's right, son. Best we keep to our own. Besides, you'll have more important uses for your time." said Stoick and as he pulled the lever of the automated saw, he added "Once we make the big announcement" in a ridiculous child-can't-wait-for-Snoggletog-eve-voice

Hiccup actually showed some backbone by stopping the saw. "They are building a dragon army..."

Everyone inside and outside the forge suddenly fell silent and all eyes rested on Hiccup. True, some vikings may be slow at processing things, but "dragon army" was unmistakably sounding bad. Hiccup, eager to quickly disperse the attention, carried on "or- or at least the guy they're working for is. Ah, Dargo Bloody-fist or something…"

Stoick expression changed drastically upon hearing the name. I could literally feel the tension, until Tuffnut's stupid remark dispersed it

"I'll bloody _his_ fist with my _face_ if he tries to take my dragon!"

Ruffnut added "Or mine."

"Urgh, you're such a moron", replied Tuffnut

Fishlegs and Snotlout drew near an obviously disgusted Ruffnut.

"A beautiful moron."

"Yeah."

Luckily no one saw me hitting my forehead with my hand. 'You all are but morons!'

Stoick had gripped Hiccup by his shoulders. "Bludvist… Drago Bludvist."

For a second Hiccup seemed to be at a loss for words, before he said "Ah yeah… Wait, you know him?"

Stoick seemed to recall some kind of memory very briefly.

"Gobber! Follow me!" ordered the chief and rushed off towards the stables.

We all exchanged some looks and ran after them in silent agreement.

Descending to the lower levels of the stables Stoick started shouting

"**GROUND ALL DRAGONS!**"

I wanted to protest, but Hiccup beat me to it

"What?! Why?!"

Stoick ignored him and kept shouting

"Seal the gates, lower the stalls doors."

Hiccup made another attempt to educe some sense from his father

"Woah woah woah, wait, wait. What is happening?"

We arrived the the lowest level of the stables and Gobber shouted "Come on! You heard the man, lock it down."

Some viking turned a lever, upon which the big gate started closing.

Stoick was still shouting orders "No dragon or Viking sets foot off this island until I give the word."

Hiccup wasn't ready to give up just yet "Wait, because some guy you knew is stirring up trouble in some far away land?"

Our chief finally stopped and turned towards his son.

"Because Drago Bludvist is a mad man. Without conscious or mercy and if he's built a dragon army, God's help us all."

I gulped audibly. Oh it's not like I was afraid or something, but if the strongest and bravest viking of Berk was praying to the gods in this situation, it sure had to be a dire one.

"Get them into the pens! Quickly!" Two vikings followed Stoick's order, quickly leading the roaming dragons into their compounds.

Hiccup didn't want to accept it just yet. He was terribly stubborn at times. That is to say, _more_ stubborn than the usual viking. He dove headfirst into another debate with his father.

" Let's ride back out there. We'll follow those trappers to Drago and talk some sense into him."

"No! We fortify the island."

"It's our duty to keep the peace."

"Peace is over, Hiccup! I must prepare you for war."

"War? Dad, if Drago's coming for our dragons we can't wait around for him to get here! Let's go find him and change his mind."

"Some minds won't be changed Hiccup. Berk is what you need to worry about. A chief protects his own." With this Stoick left to help organize the barricading.

To be honest, I was on Stoick's side this time round. Drago Bludvist sounded like major trouble and I didn't want to put either Stormfly nor Hiccup in immediate danger. Unfortunately I could read Hiccup's expressions like a book by now and realized his intentions without him having to declare them. I only managed a rather half-hearted attempt of stopping him

"Hiccup, don't..." 'defy your father, the chief, again and get all of us into trouble as a result'.

I just got a brief apologetical glance from his green eyes and a kiss to the cheek before he said "I have to."

He quickly mounted Toothless and they took off.

Oh, I was mad, I tell ya! But not in the cute girlfriend-pouting-because-her-boyfriend-went-out-alone way. It was the girlfriend-kicking-her-boyfriend's-butt-for-trying-to-leave-her-behind kind of being mad and it felt good.

I jumped onto Stormfly's back and we darted towards the gate. We barely managed to not get smashed by the huge wooden shutters.

"Well done, girl!" I exclaimed fixing my eyes on the duo in front of us "Just you wait!"

Fortunately they were flying rather close above the water, about 30 feet if I were to guess, which served my revenge just fine.

I had Stormfly fly exactly above Toothless and with a deafening war cry I jumped onto Hiccup, tackling him right off his saddle.

We plunged towards the water surface and Hiccup screamed like a girl.

"Whaaaa-t is the meaning of this Astriiiiid?!"

I twisted his arm in mid-air "That's for trying to leave me behind again!" I shouted.

He whimpered "Ow ow ow ow, o-okay, okay I'm sorry Astrid!"

"As long as you get it!" I replied, releasing him, just in time to control my fall and hit the water, feet first.

I helped him back to the surface since his artificial leg was definitely a handicap. I took a deep breath once we broke the surface and started counting '3...2...1... Night Fury!' Toothless roar was stifled by hitting the water and upon resurfacing he started growling.

"Aww, poor Toothless. But you know what they say, cling together, swing together!" I laughed.

Hiccup rolled his eyes and we swam towards a formation of boulders.

With solid ground beneath his feet my dorky boyfriend started to muster some courage

"You got my flight suit soaked, Astrid! _Not _cool. Y-You better apolo-"

I simply gave him one of my infamous stares to shut him up.

"Don't get me started! _You_ tried to leave _me_ behind. Again! Your father may be right about Drago Bludvist, NO, he certainly _is_ right about this fellow, BUT"

I started poking my finger against his chest to emphasize every word.

"I am your girlfriend. I may not like your every idea, or any of your ideas, but you can always count on me. You got that, dork?!"

Hiccup's frightened expression slowly changed and he managed a smile.

"I got it, Astrid. Thank you."

He leaned in for a kiss and I returned it. I had my generous day, okay?! Bah, mind your own business!

After Toothless' wings had dried, we took off and headed towards the dragon trapper's fort. Hiccup had marked the location in his sketch book, just in 'd have thought that he could be foresightful like that. For conversation's sake I was riding on Toothless, while Stormfly followed us on her own. I placed my chin on Hiccup's shoulder.

"Sooo, Mr. Peacemaker, what's the plan? Those guys are dragon trappers, I doubt that we'll manage to follow them secretly on our dragons."

He grinned, I groaned.

"Please, just tell me that we're gonna kick their asses and force them to lead us to Drago", I begged, but Hiccup shook his head.

"They'd probably choose death over betrayal if this Drago guy is as mad as my father said."

I hit his shoulder. That's some kind of reflex, really.

"Duh! That's why Stoick said you can't change the mind of a madman!"

He simply chuckled "Well, I changed _your_ mind."

I huffed infuriated "What's that supposed to mean, huh?! You think I'm mad?!"

"Course not", replied Hiccup, ruffling my hair.

"Oh, stop that! It takes hours to get it done like that!"

He laughed and turned his back on me. "Don't worry, I _have_ a plan, Astrid."

I sighed audibly "That's exactly the reason _why _I'm worried in the first place."

I spent the next two hours trying to draw the secret plan from Hiccup, but he refused to tell me. We approached the dragon trapper's fort with caution. I had had my daily dosis of being shot down and for all we knew, they probably were still around.

Hiccup cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted "NIGHT FURY!"

I braced myself for battle, but minutes passed and everything remained silent. Toothless landed next to the huge pillar of ice he had shot down a few hours ago. The dragon trappers were nowhere to be seen.

"That's odd", said Hiccup, looking for traces of their prey's whereabouts.

"I think it's perfectly logical. As I see it, there are two reasons why they didn't stick around."

I raised one finger. "First of all, their fort is in ruins, it's not surprising that they abandoned it. And secondly..."

I raised another finger and made eye-contact with Hiccup "...they're trying to catch dragons for Drago Bludvist, remember? No sane dragon, nor person would approach this construct. Well, except for the _four of us_. That's why it's safe to assume they left to catch dragons elsewhere."

Hiccup frowned and kicked the huge icicle on the ground. He instantly regretted having used his real leg and barely managed to stifle a curse.

"Oh that's just great! How are the supposed to find them now?"

I chuckled and ruffled his hair. 'Revenge!'

"Now don't you worry my little yak boy. Let the great Astrid Hofferson deal with that." I whistled and Stormfly, who was playing with Toothless again, came running.

"You call yourself a dragon master-"

"I never did", Hiccup interrupted.

"but you always seem to forget that my little Storm-"

"Little?!" snorted Hiccup and I groaned

"Now just shush, okay?!"

"But you gotta admit that she's nowhere near li- aah ow ow ow, stop it, Astrid!"

Upon his latest interruption I decided to headlock the little blabbermouth.

"Will. You. Be. Quiet. Now!?"

I deliberately ignored his vigorous nodding and kept his head locked tightly beneath my armpit.

"Stormfly is a dragon of the tracker class. The stench of those dragon trappers is hanging around everywhere, so it'll be easy for her to follow them."

I gave his neck a final squeeze and released him. He sank to his knees, wheezing and rubbing his neck.

"Memo to myself, never ever interrupt Astrid again."

"You got that right!" I laughed and helped him up.

"We should hurry", I continued. "The wind's pretty strong out here, their ship should be sailing well. We have to catch up to them before they reach Drago."

I had Stormfly pick up the scent of the dragon trappers, 'Yuck. I'm so sorry girl', and we took up pursuit.

Within an hour the dragon trapper's ship came into sight. Hiccup's "plan" apparently involved a frontal attack. 'Now that's more like it!' I thought. We kept on hurtling towards the ship and I could make out Eret standing at an arbalest and taking aim, at _us_. I sighed 'Here we go again...' This time around we were prepared and easily evaded all of weighted nets. We safely landed on the ship's deck and I instantly drew my axe, briefly spinning it to intimidate my enemies.

"And here I was worried we might turn up empty handed", said Eret, greeting us with his sword.

'Oh I can arrange your arrival without _any_ hands at all!' I thought, bracing myself for one of those bloody brawls I had liked ever since I could remember.

I glanced over to Hiccup and there was his hand again! Can you believe that?! Holding me back, once again! The worst, however, was yet to come.

That green-eyed lunatic actually raised his hands above his head and said "Nope. It's you're lucky day, we give up."

My eyes widened and my jaw dropped. Eret seemed to be equally stunned by that announcement, but Hiccup just dismounted Toothless and I followed him reluctantly. I told myself that this had to be part of his plan and remained on guard.

My boyfriend, however, continued talking nonsense "That's one Night Fury, one Deadly Nadder and two of the finest dragon riders west of Luck Tuck."

By the end of his sentence he had thrown a net over me.

I just had a bewildered expression on my face, unable to fully process what had just happened. Hiccup took my double-edged battle axe and simply handed it to very perplexed Eret.

"That'll make the boss happy right?" He led me along the deck, towards the dragon cage, shoving through the ranks of dragon trapper's. "Excuse us."

I finally found my voice and hissed "What are you doing?!", while descending into the dragon cage 'And what am _I_ doing?'

Hiccup ignored me and continued speaking with the baffled dragon trappers.

"Ah, Toothless stay. The dragons don't really care for cramped spaces so they'll just hang out with you, they won't be any trouble."

I could hear the clang of arms and my hand jerked towards my belt, where my axe was... _not_ hanging. Not anymore, that is.

Hiccup remained calm on the surface "Unless you do that. You know, wooden boat, big ocean. H-How is your swimming?"

"Not good", replied one of them.

Suddenly Hiccup fired up his Zipple-Sword, sticking it half-way out of the cage

"Oops, almost forgot, can't have armed prisoners."

He handed over his sword and I couldn't remain silent anymore "How is _this_ a plan?!"

He made a reassuring gesture, though it wasn't the least bit reassuring.

"Just what every Dragon trapper needs, one end coats the blade with Monstrous Nightmare saliva, the other sprays Hideous Zippleback gas. All it takes is a spark and…" he ducked and I could hear a small explosion on the deck.

"Oh yeah, there you go. Once they see you as one of their own even the testiest dragon can be trained, right bud?"

At this moment Eret got involved "Gimme that."

I couldn't really make out what he did with it, but I heard Stormfly running back and forth on deck, so I could imagine. 'My girl loves playing fetch the stick', I thought.

Meanwhile Eret asked "What game are you playing?".

"No game, we just wanna meet Drago", replied Hiccup.

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to change his mind about dragons."

I could hear Eret and his men laugh and decided to help Hiccup with his plan, even though I still didn't like it the least bit. I appeared next to my boyfriend and faced the dragon trappers

"He can be really persuasive."

"Once you've earned his loyalty, there's nothing a dragon won't do for you." continued Hiccup, gently stroking Toothless' head.

I folded my arms and glanced back and forth between Hiccup and Eret.

The latter just said "Pfft, you won't be changing any minds around here."

"I can change yours, right here, right now"

With that being said Hiccup pulled the lever to unfold Toothless' artificial fin and another to fasten it. "Ah, may I?" he asked, pointing towards the saddle.

'This might actually work', I thought, but in this very moment something scooped up my boyfriend and carried him away.

Eret shouted "Dragon Riders!" and I quickly climbed out of the cage to see the culprits with my own eyes. 'Oh that's not good...', I thought when I identified the riders as Snotlout, Fishlegs and the dorkly twins. Hiccup managed to escape from Hookfang's claws and used his flight suit to descend back towards the ship.

I tackled Eret, who was about to shoot down Hiccup "Hold your fire!"

The flying boy grapped the sails rope and skidded down to the deck.

"Ah, what are you guys doing here?" he asked and seconds later Gobber and his Hotburple Grump made a _really graceful_ landing.

"We're here to rescue you" said the Smith.

"I don't need to be rescued!" shouted Hiccup, but his father's voice silenced all of us

"Enough!"

I had started to wonder how they manged to find us, but when I saw the chief's dragon I got my answer. Rumblehorns, like Deadly Nadders, belonged to the tracker class.

Eret tried to regain control "Well, didn't you just pick the wrong ship ay? I am Eret, son of-"

But he never managed to finish the sentence, because Stoick simply shoved his face so hard that the chief dragon trapper landed on his butt. He tried to rise, but Gobber hit him over the head with his hammer and Grump decided to take a nap on him.

"Get this thing off me", breathed Eret and I caught myself pitying him. No one deserved _that much_ of Grump's love.

Gobber seemed to be in his element "Anyone else? Hmm, that's what I figured."

The rest of the dragon trappers clearly didn't want to mess with either Gobber or Stoick. Our chief faced Hiccup and me, apparently... let's say _displeased_ with our behaviour.

"You, saddle up. We're going home."

I didn't dare to object, but to my great surprise, Hiccup did.

"No."

"Of all the irresponsible-" Stoick tried to begin a lecture, but his son interrupted

"Look, I'm trying to protect our dragons and stop a war! How is that irresponsible?"

His father seemed to get rather desperate and I unconsciously ducked.

"Because war is what he wants son!"

The tension between those two was more than unpleasant. Finally, Stoick sighed and told us the whole story, with a much calmer voice.

"Years ago, there was a great gathering of chieftains to discuss the dragon scourge we all faced. Into a midst came a strange man from a strange land. Covered in scars and draped in a cloak of dragon skin. He carried no weapon and spoke softly, saying that he, Drago Bludvist, was a man of the people. Devoted to freeing mankind from the tourney of dragons. He claimed that he alone could control the dragons and he alone could keep us safe if we chose to bow down and follow him."

He was interrupted by the laughing of Snotlout and Fishlegs. Ruffnut's comment was

"Stupid" and her brother wiped a tear out of his eye "Ah, good one." I didn't join in, because I could see the chief's grim expression and knew that this couldn't be all there was to it.

"Aye, we laughed too, until he wrapped himself in his cloak and cried 'Then see how well you do without me!'. The rooftop suddenly burst into flames and armored dragons dissented from it. Burning it to the ground. I… was the only one to escape."

No one said a thing and the others of our group looked rather uncomfortable now.

"Men who kill without reason cannot be reasoned with", said Stoick with finality.

None of us would've dared to defy the chief any further, but Hiccup was determined to at least try.

"Maybe", he simply replied.

"Hiccup!" You could almost feel the heat radiating from Stoick's anger.

"I'm still going to try. This is what I'm good at, and if I could change your mind I can change his too."

I nodded in agreement. If anyone could do it, it'd be my Hiccup.

He climbed on Toothless "Come on" and they took off before Stoick could stop them.

I ran over to Stormfly, jumped on her back and urged her to follow Toothless "Let's go."

The chief's voice stopped me.

"No! Lead the others back to Berk, I've had enough mutiny for one day."

My shoulders slumped and frustration choked my throat. This wasn't fair! Not only wouldn't I be able to follow and protect Hiccup, but I also had to babysit the rest of the gang. Ruffnut was speaking with Eret, but I could only hear my own blood rushing in my ears. Stoick and Gobber mounted their dragons and flew off, in pursuit of Hiccup.

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**That's it! **

**I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter. If you did, please feel free to review. I appreciate any kind of feedback :)  
**

**Stay tuned!**


	5. Straight talk

**Hi!**

**I'm terribly sorry, but this chapter is a rather short one. I've got my hands full with studying for the upcoming finals. **

**Let me take an oath.  
**

**I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. Oh wait, wrong movie :P  
**

**I solemnly swear that the next chapter will be longer. Honestly.**

**Now please enjoy~**

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Left behind. Again. I just wanted to shout in frustration, but not while being around the gang. Stoick and Gobber had left in pursuit of Hiccup, leaving me in charge. Being stuck with Fishlegs, Snotlout, Ruffnut and Tuffnut was really irritating, even more so because Ruffnut was constantly flirting with Eret, who grimaced in disgust. Fishlegs and Snotlout shot Eret some angry looks, mixed with jealousy. And Ruffnut, well he was just his usual idiotic self. To sum up, all of them were a major pain in the ass, which only helped to worsen my mood. I sighed audibly and told the boys to tie up the dragon trappers, while I seized Ruffnut by her braid and literally pulled her off of Eret.

"Geez, Ruffnut! Enough with that nonsense now!"

"Ow! Stop that, Astrid! And what do you mean by "nonsense"? He is my true love! Just look at these arms... rawr."

I almost puked when I saw the dreamy expression in her eyes. 'Ugh... her tastes are as off as always.'

"Sorry to burst your bubble dear, but neither the chief nor your parents would consent to this kind of relationship. He's a dragon trapper and an ally of Drago Bludvist. Remember? The guy who's building a dragon army to rage war against Berk."

Ruffnut's shoulders slumped "But he's sooooo handsome... can't we, like, make an except-"

"No", I cut her short. "Now go and help the others with..." I glanced over to the guys and slapped my palm against my forehead. Snotlout and Tuffnut had tied up Fishlegs and were rolling him up and down the deck. 'By the gods, I swear I'll murder those idiots someday'.

Ruffnut looked eager to join in, but I shot her a stern look that kept her at bay. True, Ruffnut may not have been the brightest, but at least she was smart enough to fear my wrath. Fishlegs, tightly bound with ropes, came rolling towards me and I stopped him with my foot. I didn't mean to step on his face. Honestly!

"Uh, oh, I'm sorry Fishlegs."

The others were laughing till they saw my expression. Snotlout gulped audibly.

"Can't you even follow the simplest of orders?!" I snarled and started untying Fishlegs.

"Thanks, Astrid", said the stubby viking with that meek voice of his.

"I am to lead you back to Berk, but we can't simply let the dragon trappers go", I continued.

"Why not? Just-" began Eret, but my look was enough to shut him up. Okaaaay, the battle axe I was pointing at him might have helped. Satisfied?

"We can't leave until these guys are tied up properly. So get to work, _now_!"

None of the others dared to defy my orders any further.

"And make sure they cannot untie the knots themselves."

I suddenly had a flash of inspiration and a cunning half-smile appeared on my lips. I strode over to Eret and started tying him up.

"You won't get away with this, you know. Drago will kill this Hiccup guy", hissed Eret.

I sighed and spread my arms wide "None of this was supposed to happen. If only the others hadn't interfered..."

He snorted. "Wouldn't have mattered either way. Don't think that you would have been able to change my mind. Much less Drago's."

"You are wrong. You saw Hiccup's determination. He doesn't simply _think_ that dragons aren't the wild beasts we have always thought they were. He knows it for a _fact_."

I whistled softly and Stormfly came running. I gently patted her snout and she squawked in affection.

"Dragons are gentle and highly intelligent creatures. They only resort to violence if their lives, or those of their beloved ones are endangered. Berk... used to be raided by dragons frequently. For generations we fought against them, killing one another, without ever wasting a second of thought on the reason."

Eret laughed. "Dragons don't need any reason to kill. That's what makes them wild beasts!"

I shook my head "That's where you are wrong. Where... we were wrong."

Eret's laugh subsided. "What do you mean?"

"Hiccup and I found out the truth. We followed a horde of dragons when they carried off our livestock. Up to this moment we had thought that they simply stole it to feed on it, however, not one dragon took a single bite. They just tossed all of it into the pit of a volcano."

The chief dragon trapper frowned "How's that any better?"

"The Red Death, an over 500 feet tall, six-eyed dragon of the stoker class lived inside the volcano and devoured all of the livestock, plus some unlucky dragons."

Eret's jaw drooped slightly "D-Don't tell me you actually tamed that monster..."

"No. Hiccup and Toothless killed it in self-defence. The important part, however, is that the Red Death had enslaved the other dragons, forcing them to collect food. They could only obey, or become food themselves. After its death, the dragon raids ended and we managed to befriend them. Nowadays our lives are closely intertwined and trust me, nothing better has ever happened to us."

I fell silent. I wasn't sure why I had told him everything, but it just felt right. 'That's probably Hiccup's influence. If I don't watch out, I'll end up non-violent.'

"Don't think that I believe a single word of your little story, dragon rider."

"You seem to know awfully little about dragons, _dragon trapper_."

Just then Ruffnut called me. "We're done over here, Astrid."

"Alright, well done. Now then..." I pretended to check the knot on Eret's wrists, but secretly loosened the rope.

Before Eret could react I whispered "We'll meet again" and hit him over the head with the blunt side of my battle axe.

He passed out with a groan.

After knocking out the remaining dragon trappers we mounted our dragons and set course for Berk.

My plan was working fine so far, but another problem remained. Stoick's order was absolute and defiance was no option. A pride viking vows to obey his chief at all times and I honored this vow... _most of the time_. I needed to defy the chief, without defying him. The others were not gonna help me with this one, because they feared Stoick's wrath even more than mine. So far I was following the chief's orders. We were flying towards Berk in loose formation and at a rather slow pace, which left me with plenty time to do some thinking.

"Now... what would _Hiccup_ do?" I murmured to myself.

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**What do you think Astrid's going to do? It's certainly dangerous that she's trying to follow Hiccup's line of thought, isn't it?**

**Alright, I sincerly hope that you enjoyed the newest chapter, despite its brevity.**

**Feel free to review, any kind of feedback is highly appreciated :)**

**Stay tuned!**


	6. Turmoil

**Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you!**

**I hope you're enjoying yourselves with friends and family.**

**If this chapter adds to your joy, all the better ^-^**

**EDIT: I'm really sorry for the delay, but i just have to focus on my exams for now. I should be able to continue mid-February. Please bear with me :/**

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They came from our blindspots. Armored dragons, four in number, roared in unison and began their attack. Our loose formation and sluggish pace had made us easy targets, in other words, it was my fault. Each of the armored opponents pitted itself against one of our dragons, forcing them into close-quarters battles. One of these heavy weights slammed into Stormfly with incredible force and I was almost thrown out of my saddle. My girl squawked in pain and I gasped because the impact had driven the air out of my lungs. Stormfly managed to break away from our adversary, but it took me some time to catch my breath and my girl had to resort to some fancy manoeuvres to evade the armored attacker. I glanced over to the others and saw that all of them had similar trouble dealing with their foes. My thoughts were racing. 'Just what _are_ these dragons? They don't resemble any race I've dealt with so far... and why, in Thor's name, are they attacking us?' It suddenly dawned on me.

"Drago Bludvist...", I murmured.

These dragons were probably a small vanguard of his dragon army, maybe the very same that attacked the chieftains meeting years ago. 'This is no good. If this fight drags on we will surely lose. Our dragons are plenty tired from the dragon race and the continuous flying...', I thought, already devising a suitable battle strategy. Fortunately, among the dragon riders of Berk our gang was the most experienced when it came to aerial battles. My harsh drill would hopefully pay off now.

"Listen up, guys!", I shouted against the wind, "Attack pattern _Mjölnir_! Go!"

I patted Stormfly's neck and took a deep breath. We roared in unison and the others did the same, each of them mimicking their respective dragon's roar. The multitude and volume of these roars were enough to confuse our adversaries, which bought us enough time for our counterattack.

"It's your turn, girl."

Stormfly shot some well-aimed spikes that penetrated the leathery wings of our enemies, derogating their ability to fly. The paralysing poison of the spikes intensified this effect. Barf, Belch and Meatlug circled the armored reptiles, attacking them with fireballs and explosions.

"Now, Snotlout!", I screamed and signaled the others to back away.

"Leave it to me!", replied Snotlout.

Hookfang spread his enormous wings as far as possible and with a powerful stroke he created a fierce gust of wind, that sent the armored dragons tumbling uncontrollably. They managed to stay airborne, but they had lost a few hundred feet of height and, due to their injured wings, they weren't able to rise again. Our adversaries roared in frustration and retreated eventually.

I breathed a sigh of relief and patted Stormfly's neck "Well done, sweetie." She squawked proudly and I allowed myself a little whoop of joy. The others were jeering, congratulating themselves for a job well done.

"Nicely done, guys!" I exclaimed and leaned back in my saddle. Thank the gods we were able to drive them away without inflicting serious injuries. If there was the slightest chance to free them from Drago's control, we'd embrace it. For now, however, we had to rest.

* * *

We were resting on a flat iceberg, not far from the brash ice that appears in some distance around Berk during the coldest part of the year. A shiver ran down my spine, but not from the cold. I was thinking about the dragon attack. It wasn't probable that the Vanguard of Drago Bludvist's dragon army consisted of a mere four-dragon-squad and this was bothering me greatly. The others were too easygoing for my liking. Fishlegs, Snotlout and Ruffnut had dismounted their dragons, while Tuffnut sat on Belch's neck. The Hideous Zippleback, however, seemed to fall asleep any minute now. None of them seemed the least bothered by the attack. I didn't fancy another surprise attack, which, combined with my inner turmoil, kept me from resting properly. I urged Stormfly to patrol the perimeter, which, to be honest, wasn't that much to patrol. My anxiety was projected onto my girl and she started flying small loops around the iceberg, while I kept an eye on the horizon. Upon landing I felt like I had to share my concerns.

"Am I the only one who thinks that an army's vanguard can't possibly consist of only four dragons?" I asked.

Snotlout snorted. "Yes Astrid, you're the _only_ one."

I couldn't believe what I had just heard. "So, you _do_ think the same?" I inquired, upon hearing the sarcasm in his voice.

He frowned. "No! I just said you're the _only_ one, Astrid! You got hearing problems?"

"Start making sense will you?!" I snapped at him. "You were sarcastic just now, weren't you?"

Snotlout's eye shone with incomprehension. "Did you just insult me?! Because I sure hope you did not!" he barked.

"No!" I retorted "I did no- ugh, forget it, Snotface."

"Did you just call me Snotface!?"

"No, I did _not_", I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Oh... well that's fine then."

I hit my forehead with my hand and groaned audibly. 'This guy is driving me nuts!'

After this incredibly irritating and wholly pointless "conversation" I continued scouting the surroundings with Stormfly.

My inner turmoil grew with every passing minute and after another hour of being trapped on a small iceberg with Snotlout, Fishlegs, Ruff and Tuff – oh the horror – I was convinced that something must have happened. I had Stormfly land.

"I don't like it. They should've been back with Hiccup by now", I said, still scanning the sky.

"I don't like it either", replied Ruffnut. 'Could it be?', I thought, 'Did Ruffnut just agree with me?'

"Eret son of Eret was the man of my dreams. My everything!"

I groaned.

"But, baby, I grew facial hair for you" said Snotlout, still eager to attract Ruffnut's attention.

"Me, too", Fishlegs added.

I surely would've hit my head against a stone wall, if there had been one. 'These guys are unbelievable...'

"What if Drago shot them down? What if they need our help?", I asked.

My answer consisted of five empty faces staring at me. I was about to "What?!" them, but I didn't intend to start another discussion and continued.

"We have to find them."

"Wait, wait. What? But Stoick said..." Fishlegs began, but I cut him short.

"It doesn't matter what he said, if they've all been captured. Come on!"

Stormfly and I took off, but the gang didn't move at all. I had Stormfly turn towards the iceberg while flying on the spot.

"Deserters, eh?" I said with a calm, but stern voice.

Fishlegs squeaked, but Snotlout hit him and all of them were holding my gaze with their arms crossed.

"We don't have to obey you, Astrid", Snotlout said.

"T-That's right... we o-only pledged allegiance to Stoick...", Fishlegs murmured.

"They're right, you know. You've been acting waaaaaay to bossy lately, Astrid", Ruffnut added.

Tuffnut agreed with her "True. You're acting like you are the boss or something."

"That's what I just said, yak-brain!", Ruff retorted.

"No you didn't!" replied Tuff and seconds later they were fighting with each other.

"That so, hm!?", I replied in a threatening tone while cracking my fingers.

The twins instantly stopped fighting and Fishlegs twitched nervously.

"O-On second thought, I kinda agree with Astrid", stammered the chubby viking, "i-if Drago really captured them, we are obliged to help them."

The others nodded vigorously and mounted their dragons extra fast.

'Good for them', I thought with a complacent smile on the lips.

I had Stormfly turn around. If my plan had worked, Eret and his dragon trappers were bound to be free and sailing again by now. I didn't like it, but he was the only way to find Drago's hideout.

"Stormfly, we're looking for Eret."

My girl squawked upon hearing that name. Ever since Eret had unknowingly played fetch-Hiccup's-sword with her, she had a crush on him. Consequently she had memorized his smell perfectly well by now and followed it without problems.

We were flying northwards and the wind kept getting colder.

"I doubt that the dragon trappers would try to catch dragons this far north!" I shouted against the fierce gust. "They must be heading towards Drago's hideout!"

"More importantly, Astrid", Ruff called out to me, "how come my beloved Eret and his minions are free? Didn't we tie them up?"

"I don't know, Ruffnut", I said with an air of innocence, "maybe you guys didn't tie em up properly, because you were busy fooling around."

"Except for Fishlegs, he was _rolling_ around!" Snotlout laughed.

"Oh, that was cool!", Tuffnur exclaimed.

"Not it wasn't!" Fishlegs protested "I felt sick and Astrid stepped on my face!"

I sighed. "Guys, concentrate!"

* * *

Well below us the scenery had changed. The vast ocean was covered with ice floes, leading up to giant icebergs, which equalled Berk in size. After a while I could make out the dragon trappers ship, carefully navigating through the ice floes.

"You guys wait here, we mustn't get spotted!" I shouted and urged Stormfly into a steep dive, without explaining my plan.

Upon closing in I could see Eret pacing across the ship's deck. "Alright, girl", I said, "get him!"

Stormfly spread her claws and just as Eret said "...if we don't turn up with dragons and fast- " she snatched him. We ascended and Stormfly readjusted her grip on Eret.

"Careful what you wish for!" I shouted towards Eret, who by now was holding on Stormfly's leg for dear life.

One of the dragon trappers shouted "Eret son of Eret!" and fired the ballista. I managed to evade the net by having Stormfly do a barrel roll.

"What is this?!" cried Eret, his voice full of panic. 'Apparently the poor fella is afraid of heights...hm...', I thought.

"A kidnapping", I simply replied.

Ruffnut approached from below and snatched Eret's arm, embracing it tightly. "Yay! Can he ride with me? Can he? _Can he_?"

Eret wriggled away.

"You're gonna show us the way to Drago", I continued in a demanding tone.

Eret frowned "And help Dragon Riders sneak into Drago's camp? Just kill me now." He let go of Stormfly's leg, but my girl was still holding him by one arm and leg.

I chuckled. 'That's almost too easy.'

"That can be arranged." I gently patted Stormfly's side "Stormfly, drop it."

"Huh?" was all Eret could manage before he plummeted towards the ocean. "Aaaaaah!"

"Good girl!" I said, grinning about her playfulness "Stormfly, fetch!"

Stormfly went into a steep dive.

Eret was still busy crying at the top of his lungs "Aaaaaaah! Alright! Okay! I'll take you to Drago!"

My girl caught Eret and I stretched my arms, smiling complacently "Ha, works every time."

"Every time?" Eret whimpered "What kind of monster are you?"

"A Monstrous Nightmare's worst nightmare!" I replied. "Now, which way?"

"Still further northward..."

We eventually reached an archipelago. Icebergs surrounded the area, but the ocean connecting the islands was almost free of ice floes.

"We need a safe landing spot!", I shouted towards Eret.

"Pah, go to Hel!" he retorted.

I sighed. "Stormfly, dro-"

"NO! No, I-I meant to say... go to the left."

Before she could land Stormfly had to drop Eret, who immediately tried to flee. My girl pinned him down with her feet and sat upon him, like a hen would sit on its egg. 'Aww, so cute', I thought and turned towards Eret.

"Agghh! Okay! I got you here, now get this thing off me!", he complained.

"Never take a toy from a dragon. Don't you know anything?" I replied and started to climb the slope, because the noise seemed to come from the other side.

"Gah! Why does this keep happening to me?" Eret moaned.

I reached the top of the slope and peeked over it.

'Oh, no...'

* * *

**If you liked the newest chapter, feel free to review and/or message me any kind of feedback/questions you might have.**

**The next chapter should be online before the year ends, however, I can't promise anything :P**

**Stay tuned!**


	7. Captured

**Hi!**

**I'm back, Astrid's back, HTTYD 2: Starring Astrid Hofferson is BACK!**

**It has been over half a year, but many things happened during that time and I was about to quit writing altogether. But I'm quite motivated again even though I have less time on my hands and the least I could do for those who read my story in these past months during my hiatus is actually finishing the story.**

**So please enjoy the _newest chapter _of this story and, as usual, feel free to give me feedback in whichever way you prefer!**

* * *

A terrible sight had greeted me. 'This can't be good', I thought.

Dozens of heavily armed ships surrounded a huge hole in the ice. Air bubbles rose from the depth causing the sea to look like boiling water. It wasn't the first time we had seen something like this, but the magnitude had never been this great before. Snotlout and Fishlegs appeared next to me and we remained in a crouching position. I gave them a few seconds to form an opinion about the situation at hand and eventually asked "What's down there?"

Fishlegs took out some cards from his belt pocket and ran through them, while giving us the main facts. "Large diameter bubbles, massive lungs, cold water deep dweller, I'm thinking class five leviathan, maybe six", he said, sounding rather astonished.

Leviathan is the classification for deep sea dwellers. These dragons are extra tough, since they live in great depths and barely ever appear on the surface. They don't really have any natural enemies and thus grow to enormous heights. This fella sounded like major trouble and I was about to order the retreat, when Stormfly squawked in alert. We turned around but it was too late. My girl took off and Eret emerged, sword in hand and shouting. Behind him more than half a dozen other men appeared. The strangers wore polar bear fur and started shooting arrows with their blowpipes. Our dragons had collapsed and we ran down the slope towards them. "Meatlug! What's wrong, girl?" Fishlegs shouted. I was pretty sure that these were more of Drago's men and that they wouldn't just kill our dragons. I concluded that they had used some sort of tranquilizer, but I nevertheless breathed a sigh of relief when my assumption was confirmed upon closer inspection.

The situation, however, was quite serious. Drago's men had us surrounded, Eret included. One of them said "Don't move!", which I had totally intended to do. Except maybe less moving, more swinging my battle axe. Unfortunately only Eret and I carried weapons and we couldn't count on this dorky dragon trapper. I had told the others time and again to carry a weapon on themselves, precisely for these kind of situations, but as usual they didn't heed my words. Being outnumbered and without our dragons, we had no choice but to surrender. 'For now', I thought, lowering my axe with gritted teeth. I built my hopes on Stormfly, who had managed to escape from the ambush and whom I couldn't see while scouting the area. 'Please be safe, girl.'

Drago's men had tied our hands behind our backs and led us across a wide, wooden landing stage. My five senses were especially keen during moments like this and I did my best to gain as much information as possible. Information that might help us escape. Left and right of us huge warships were anchored, heavily armed and ready to wreck havoc wherever this insane maniac Drago wanted them to. Two of his armored dragon's led our little procession but they started cowering in fear when Drago stepped on the landing stage himself. I could only speculate on the reason but it probably was something very sinister because these very dragons had fought a fierce fight against us not too long ago. There was no mistaking it, because I could see the little holes that Stormfly's spikes had left in their wings. Eret hurriedly addressed his master "Drago!" and snapped at the guard holding him back "Get off me!" He sounded rather uncomfortable as he continued

"Ha-ha, always great to see you, my friend! Keeping warm up here? Well, as you can see, I'm here right on time with a new batch of dragons, just like I promised."

Suddenly Hookfang, who had been tied to a carriage for transportation, woke up and tried to free himself, hissing fiercly. "Watch out! He's waking up! Keep him steady!" "Give me some backup here!" "Watch out!" Drago's men were unable to control the situation and I watched the chaos with delight. 'You show em, Hookfang!'

Then I heard Drago's voice for the very first time which sent a cold shiver down my spine. He sounded just like the cruel man void of empathy Stoick had told us about. "Drop the ropes", he said and stepped forward. Hookfang snapped at the guards again and finally fixed his gaze upon Drago. I knew what was going to happen and secretly I hoped that this would mark the start of our escape. Without warning Hookfang started breathing fire and Drago vanished inside a ball of flames. Instead of crying out in pain he actually advanced towards Hookfang and when the dragon's flame died he emerged, unharmed. 'But that's not possible!' I thought desperately and turned towards the others, seeking for an answer in their empty faces. 'Unless... of course, dragon skin is fire resistant. That fiend is actually wearing a dragon's skin!' My blood started boiling but I was unable to do a thing when Drago suddenly started shouting and swung his spear above his head a few times before stabbing it deep into the wooden planks. His intimidation seemed to work on Hookfang and the dragon eventually averted his gaze and let his head slump onto the ground. When he stepped onto the dragon's snout I could hear Snotlout and Ruffnut shout "Hookfang! Hey!" and I snarled at Drago "What are you doing?!" He ignored us, his gaze fixed upon Hookfang "You belong to me now." As his gaze wandered he eventually spotted our saddles. Eret noticed as well raised his voice again "And as an added bonus, I also caught you their riders. No extra charge."

I just couldn't believe this guy. "What?! Are you kidding me?!" Ruffnut had her own problems "Ah, but you were so perfect!" I'd have loved to beat in _his_ head, with _hers_. Eret continued, not seeing Drago advance towards him "Turns out, there's a whole bunch of them out there. They-" Drago had grabbed Eret around the neck and choked him "How many?" If he had captured Hiccup and Toothless he should already know about Berk, which meant... "Drago doesn't have them after all", I whispered loud enough for the others to hear. "HOW MANY?!" Drago repeated, still tightening his grip around Eret's neck. Before Eret could answer, however, I raised my voice since I saw a slim chance to escape "Hundreds! A whole island full!" While that technically may not be a lie, last time we counted there actually lived 101 vikings on Berk, half of those were either too old or too young to even ride a dragon and while certainly many vikings of Berk _do_ live and work together with dragons, only the six of us really ride and fight with them regularly. But you know how the saying goes _What the eye does not see, the heart does not grieve over _right?

Eret tried to save his sorry hide by downplaying my words "I wouldn't worry about it. My men are hunting them down as we speak. They won't know where you're hiding. I promise you that." His voice grew fainter each second because Drago was still choking him harder. "Oh, yes they will!" I interjected and stepped towards Drago, who had just dropped Eret on the ground. I wasn't done just yet "They know we're missing and they have tracking dragons. If you so much as touch us, Hiccup is gonna kick-"

Drago interrupted me right there "Hiccup?" Eret hurriedly replied "He's not a problem. Really. Trust me." I mustered my courage and stepped even close towards Drago "He's only the son of Stoick the Vast... his heir to the throne of Berk... and the greatest Dragon Master this world has ever seen!"

"Dragon master? I ALONE control the dragons!" Drago replied. Before I could answer the others retorted "Nope. Mhmm. Sorry!" and laughed at his claim. My plan to get us free by intimidating him was in danger since mockery usually didn't strike fear into the enemies' hearts, but frenzy. I hurriedly continued "And unless you let us go, _right now_, he will blast through here on his Night Fury and blow your entire fleet of ships to splinters!" I secretly congratulated myself for this threat and let my hateful gaze rest upon Drago. Then, as usual, the others ruined my plan. "Then they'll be crying like babies!" Ruffnut shouted and immediately got complimented by Snotlout and Fishlegs "Funny and beautiful!" "Good one, babe!" Tuffnut took a while to think and eventually added "Yeah. Like babies. They always cry. Real tiny ones..."

If there ever had been a touch of doubt or even fear in Drago's eyes, it had disappeared by now. He simply grabbed Eret and lifted him from the ground "First there was one rider. And now all of Berk. And you lead them to me." He threw the dragon trapper across the dock and ignored him, while climbing one of his siege weapons. "STOP ALL PREPARATIONS! WE MUST ATTACK THE DRAGONS RIDER'S NEST AT ONCE! WE WILL TAKE DOWN THEIR ALPHA... AND THEN WE WILL TAKE _BERK!" _boomed his voice fiercely and for the first time since our captivity, I was scared. Eret attempted again to gain his masters attention. "And get rid of him." Eret backed down, while Drago's men surrounded him. Then everything happened really fast. The men threw their axes, Stormfly appeared out of nowhere and diverted the weapons. She tried to hit the guards with her spikes, but failed to do so and finally took a tranquilizer arrow to the neck. "STORMFLY!" I gasped when she appeared and as she slumped onto the ground I tried to reach her in vain. A guard was holding me back "NO!" For a moment I could see Eret's surprised expression and even Drago seemed somewhat amazed that the dragon had protected the dragon trapper. "Oh well", he said eventually "Make haste with the preparations for our attack on the dragon rider's nest... and make those six walk the plank." With this he disappeared while some of his men brought us on one of the warships to follow Drago's command. 'This is it', I thought bitterly and blinked away some tears 'Not even Hiccup can help us anymore... and what's worse, none of us can help Berk. Dammit!' I had seldom felt so powerless...

* * *

**That's it! (for now)**

**The next chapter will have new original scenes, written by myself entirely. Look forward to it :)**

**Stay tuned!**

**P.S. Thanks to all of you who checked for updates regularly, even though I was on hiatus for more than 6 months. It really helped me gather the motivation to continue this story. Lots of good vibes your way :)**

**P.P.S. I changed my name from MaexRespect to Maexwell (in case you wondered)**


	8. Friend or Foe?

**Hey y'all, **

**without further ado here it is: _The newest chapter of HTTYD 2: Starring Astrid Hofferson!_**

**Enjoy~**

* * *

Drago's men led us aboard one of the huge battleships which had just set sail. My usual self would have come up with half a dozen ways of escaping by now, but unfortunately I _wasn't _my usual self at all. My head felt numb and I couldn't help but worry about Stormfly. Of course there also was the whole 'you're about to die' stuff going on but this was bigger than me, bigger than even Berk. If Drago managed to kill this Alpha he'd talked about, the future wouldn't be a bright one. 'What to do, what to do... _You tell me!_ Huh? _What's up with you, anyway?_ _Man up, Astrid!_ Well, technically I ama woman._ Geez, you know what I mean! Just look at you pulling the damsel in distress act! And you even talk to yourself, in your head! _Am not! _You so are!_ Argh, whatever, just shut up! _You shut up..._'

I tore my hair in frustration. But the voice in my head had a point, I needed to get a grip and find an opportunity to escape. I sure as hell wouldn't go down without a fight. I took a deep breath and surveyed the situation at hand. The lot of us was standing on top of a plank, the cold, dark sea below our feet. 'Looks comfy', I suddenly thought and chuckled. Maybe drowning was a proper death for a viking, after all. '_Think again!_ Calm down, I was joking.'

Our situation, however, was quite dire. I couldn't free my hands and without any of our dragons the chance of us escaping was pretty low. For now all I could do was glare at the backside of Eret's head and cursing him to Helheim. As if he had felt my gaze, he turned around after taking a quick peek over the plank.

"Looks refreshing. Please, ladies first."

I jumped onto him and crushed his ugly mug with a single jab of my elbow, or at least I would have if it weren't for Drago's men holding me back. My glare intensified and I retorted with boiling anger "You are a steaming heap of dragon-"

He didn't let me finish. After his vigorous "Duck!" my body had reacted instinctively and well... ducked. Eret knocked out both guys standing behind me with a well executed (gotta give him that) spin kick. He proceeded with catching one of their weapons that were sent flying, cutting his ropes and finally simply snatching the other weapon from the air. His smug look ruined it, but apart from that, I was pretty amazed. I moved behind Eret as the other guards came rushing towards us.

"Warn the others!" one of them shouted and Ruffnut was back to adoring the dragon trapper "Get em' you son of an Eret!" Said Eret knocked out two more guards, another one took an arrow to the knee... well not quite the knee. Fishlegs bodyslammed one poor devil and finally Eret caught the blowpipe and took out the remaining soldier from a distance. "Okay, I love you again", Tuffnut proclaimed. Snotlout's faced dropped and Ruffnut did what he could best: make fun of him "Ugh. Pathetic. You can still jump." Eret approached me "So, are we going to save your dragons and get out of here or not?" I nodded approvingly and waited for someone to cut my ropes. Eret freed Tuffnut and went ahead "Check every trap. They're here somewhere."

'Gotta admit that was pretty cool. _Ugh. Don't you have Hiccup already? _Oh shut up, will ya?'

We separated to search the entire ship for the traps containing our dragons. It didn't take long to locate one of them beneath some kind of tent made of cloth. I turned the crank to open the trap wide enough to peek inside. I could make out a round shape. "Meatlug?" It was indeed Meatlug that was bound to the ground by chains and heavy ropes. I jumped into the trap and began untying the poor girl. "There, there. Fishlegs should be on his way." Right on cue I could hear him jump up and down in front of the trap, apparently unable to climb up by himself. I sighed and climbed out to assist him. Ten minutes of taxing pushing an shoving later Fishlegs was with his beloved Meatlug and I closed the trap above them for now. It was time to find my own scaly friend. Moving aboard the ship was risky to say the least. We had tied up and hidden the KO'd soldiers, so for Drago's part we had gone over the plank and drowned. Unfortunately it was only a matter of time until they'd start to miss the six soldiers that were guarding us. For now, however, we could only hope that it would take them as long as possible. I skillfully snuck across the deck, evading guards whenever necessary, and checked upon the others. "Stay quietly inside the traps and wait for them to open. We can get them by surprise", was what I told all of them. Finally I located the last trap, opened the hatch and climbed in. "Stormfly", I whispered delighted and hugged her. To my surprise she wasn't tied at all. "I undid the ropes", a voice behind me said. My heart skipped a beat and I turned around, fist flying towards the potential threat. I only just managed to not smash it against Eret's flinching face.

"God dammit, Eret," I hissed "don't startle me like that!"

He breathed a sigh of relief and took a few steps back, raising his hands "My bad, Valkyrie of Berk."

"Val- what? What's with that stupid nickname?"

"Ah, I just thought it suited you."

"Oh please, stop the soft-soaping, you better don't think I've forgotten what you did to me, to _us_", I said with a sideglance to Stormfly. My girl, however, trudged towards Eret and pressed her snout against his palm. The unambiguous sign of trust.

"Seems like your Stormfly has forgiven me." 'Tch. Traitor.'

"Th- That doesn't mean she fully trusts you!" '_It does, though._ Shut up!'

"Anyway, why are you here of all places?" I inquired, sizing him up.

He seemed to shuffle uncomfortably and cleared his throat before answering.

"Well, your drag- Stormfly, saved my life. I just thanked her."

After a short glance at my doubtful gaze he quickly added "It's true, I swear."

I crossed my arms behind my back and strode up and down speaking in a calm, yet chilly manner

"Let's consider I do believe you, why are you suddenly willing to help us escape? After all, you brought us into this situation in the first place."

"Well, technically we came here because you-"

"I _said, _you caused this whole mess to begin with, so why should I trust you?"

"Well... Drago ordered to kill me and..."

"So you chose to change sides after being backstabbed by your boss? You saved your own sorry hide and with nowhere to turn to, you thought to make amends by helping us. Is that it?"

My stern gaze rested upon him, not missing the slightest movement of his facial muscles.

"That's not it." He tried to feign an honest smile, needless to say it couldn't fool me.

"You're lying. If that's it, you should leave, _now. _Otherwise I can't be held responsible for what might happen." I took a fighting stance.

For a few moments it looked like he was about to actually engage in that fight, but his shoulders finally slumped and he sighed "Alright, I'll be honest"

'Good for him', I thought, cracking my knuckles. Apart from that I remained silent, waiting for his "honesty" to surface.

"To be honest, I did think about doing what you said earlier. But I changed my mind. Stormfly saving me, that got me thinking... rather contemplating... suddenly the image I had of dragons was shattered. Those fire-breathing, scaly monsters that I came to fear as a child and to hate as an adult... they don't actually exist, do they?"

He really didn't lie this time, call it a gut feeling, but I kinda knew. "Dragons are actually peace-loving creatures, yes. They would never fight just for the sake of fighting. If they do, they are simply trying to protect what's dear to them, or, to survive."

Eret nodded slowly "Thought as much. But how did you learn all of that?"

"Hiccup", I simply said.

"Someone's thinking about you?" he replied with a smug grin.

I rolled my eyes "I _said_ Hiccup, I did not actually hiccup."

His grin froze. "Oh, right, that was his name, wasn't it? So... he was the first to tame a dragon?"

"We don't _tame_ dragons, we befriend them. They're not pets, Eret." I kinda spat out his name right there, the conversation started to annoy me.

"Right, sorry, I didn't mean any harm."

"Except for when you shot us down and handed us over to Drago, of course."

He fell silent, clearly at a loss for words.

'_Aren't you a bit too hard on him? _Not at all. _He apologized._ Wow, big deal. _Come on, at least give him a chance.'_ I sighed, this sympathetic side of my consciousness started to get on my nerves too.

"Alright, I guess it's okay to tell you about how we managed to turn dragons from foes to friends. But I hate repeating myself, so sit down, shut yer trap and listen closely."

I sat down cross-legged, back leaning against Stormfly, who had curled up behind me.

"I guess it all started when Hiccup shot down the Night Fury Toothless."

"He shot down a Night Fury?!" Eret gasped, which earned him a quick blow to the stomach.

"No interruptions!"

"Sorry... carry on..." he muttered, trying to refill his lungs.

'I'm getting soft', I thought and carried on. I told him all about what had happened about 5 years ago...

After I had finished I simply observed him for a while. He seemed reasonably stunned. It took him a few minutes to open his mouth "Hard to believe, to say the least."

"It's all true. After the fight against the Red Death we little by little strengthened the bonds with the dragons and integrated them into our daily lives."

"Humans and dragons living in peace, huh? Sounds nice."

"It is", I replied while absentmindedly scratching Stormfly's chin.

"From your perspective I must look like a monster, making a living by catching and selling dragons. Specially when working for someone like Drago, to whom dragons are even below vermin."

I considered what he said for a moment "You're not that different to how the rest of us was just 5 years ago. Back then... killing my first dragon in front of the whole village was my biggest dream. Your worth was decided by the amount of dragons you had managed to kill. In retrospect, it was hell, but back then, we all indiscriminately followed that way of life without ever questioning our relationship with the dragons. Except for Hiccup." I felt a painful sting in my chest when I thought about him. 'Please be safe...'

"He seems to be quite dear to you."

"I love him", I said to my own surprise. I hadn't told Hiccup yet and I hadn't been aware that my feelings for him were quite so clear.

"I see. So where is he right now?"

"I don't know. He went against the chief's order and disappeared from your boat, remember?"

"Now that you mention it... then again, I remember an incredibly heavy dragon lying on top of me. Not exactly the best seat in the house."

I chuckled. "I'm sure Grump would be sorry by now."

Eret stood up "So am I, really."

I gave him an honest smile for the very first time then. "Well put me in a corset and call me Sally, you _can_ be honest after all."

We both laughed and he finally said "So, _Sally_, I think it'd be best if we checked our current location. Better be prepared for whatever is ahead of us, hm?"

"I will do it. You stay here with Stormfly. She likes you and hates dark places. I'll be back in a bit."

With that said, I climbed out and almost walked right into another guard that had just come through the tent's entrance. I ducked low and somersaulted into the shadows just in time to prevent detection. The guard coughed and scratched a very inappropriate part of his body, steadily moving towards the trap. I held my breath and snuck towards him. A quick chop to the back of his neck sent him to dreamland and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'll close the trap for now, they almost caught onto us just now. If you hear someone approach, make sure to hide", I told Eret and dragged the unconscious guard out of the tent. I shoved him into an empty barrel and fastened the lid. A quick gaze above the railing told me that we were near the fortress of the dragon trappers. You know, the one that had been obliterated by an ice-breathing dragon, apparently. 'Does that mean the nest of dragons is actually pretty close?'

Since the sunset was imminent I decided to return to Stormfly and Eret, but before I could take a single step in that direction another patrol of guards appeared around the corner. I acted swiftly and slid through the tent right next to me. Without making a sound I opened the trap, jumped into it and let it shut close above me. My landing was soft and I intently listened to the guards' steps disappearing. Below me I could hear muffled sounds which started to annoy me. A fast glance downwards revealed that I had landed on Fishlegs, one of my feet squeezing his face into the wooden floor. "Oh, hi there, Fishlegs." I stepped down and helped him get up. "Don't 'Oh, hi there' me, Astrid. That hu-" "Shush!" I hissed and pressed one of my palms against his mouth. "Quick, help me put the restraints on Meatlug." We pulled the chains and ropes back into place and retreated into the darker parts of the trap. "Don't say a word", I ordered and waited with baited breath. From outside the guards' voices could be heard. After a while the trap was opened and one of the guards peeked inside. "The dragon is still bound. No problems here." The guards kept talking to one another for a while, but eventually they closed the trap and left. I sighed and got up. One thing was for certain, I wouldn't make it back to Stormfly for now. The danger of being caught was way to big. True, Fishlegs wasn't on my top 5 list of preferred company, but I guess it beat being on my own. So I spent the next hours mentally preparing for the battles to come, trying not to vomit while Meatlug licked Fishleg's fishy legs.

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**I hope you enjoyed chapter 8 and look forward to an action-packed 9th chapter :-)**

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	9. War

**Hey, I hope I didn't startle you :D This _really_ is the 9th chapter! I kinda got on a roll there.**

**Please enjoy the latest chapter!**

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In what seemed an eternity we steadily made our way towards the Dragon's Nest, hidden inside the traps along our dragons. Well some of us, anyway. I had spent the last few hours trying to ignore the mollycoddling of Fishlegs. We all loved our dragons but this was too much. For everyone's sake I won't go into detail here. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths to empty my mind.

'_Yeah, right. _Don't get me started!'

To be honest I was worried about the battle. Drago Bludvist's fleet was several hundred men and a few dozen armored dragons strong, more than enough to annihilate Berk more than once.

I had never been to this so-called Dragon Rider's Nest, for all I knew the Riders of Berk were the only ones. After all, neither Hiccup nor I had ever met others on our recon flights.

'I really hope that whoever lives there is actually prepared for this kind of attack. This "Alpha" seems to be the ace.'

It wasn't exactly like me to be so nervous before a fight, but to be fair, I had never participated in such a large-scale conflict. This would be war, and war had its own rules.

Another while of constant worrying and planning later the sea had become a lot calmer, which meant that we had entered coastal waters and landing was imminent. We came to a halt and I ordered Fishlegs to put the bounds on Meatlug again in case the trap was checked once more. We withdrew into the shadows and waited in total silence. The deck of the ship suddenly became very busy, dozens of steps passing by in rapid succession. Men relayed orders to one another, readying weapons, slingshots and... _traps_. It took another while, but eventually the men got to work on our trap as well. The whole trap rocked back and forth for a while and finally was steadily dragged across the deck.

"They probably put the dragons to work," Fishlegs whispered.

"What have I told you!?" I hissed.

"If they fin-" he replied and instantly earned a painful kick on the shin.

"That was a rhetorical question, you dunce."

Fortunately the trap made a lot of noise itself while being dragged along the deck and our little quarrel went unnoticed.

It was hard to tell how many time had passed, but the trap stopped quite abruptly. Outside I could hear the noise of dozens of men hustling and bustling about, readying siege weapons of all kinds.

'If only I could _see_ what's going on. Wait... I can.' I rummaged my leather legwarmers and eventually brought forth one of Stormfly's spikes. Luckily I always kept one of them on me. I got straight to work, applying force onto the spike to steadily prick a hole into the trap. After a while I had managed to open a peephole and let my gaze wander over the battlefield. It was even worse than I had anticipated. Drago's army was overwhelmingly large and had brought dozens of nasty-looking weapons to incapacitate dragons. I gave a jerk and scrambled backwards when Drago's voice suddenly boomed over the battlefield.

"Whatever comes, keep hitting the mountain. We need to draw the Alpha out. Ready the traps!"

I forced myself to get a grip and hurriedly removed the bounds from Meatlug.

"That's our cue, Fishlegs!"

He got into the saddle, gently patting Meatlug's side. "Let's show them, girl." I got on behind him, but remained standing.

"Remember Fishlegs, we need to locate and get close to Stormfly quickly."

"Roger!"

All around us the battle had already started and we could hear the fierce roars of hundreds of dragons. My muscles tensed and I again mentally prepared myself. 'Worst case? _You die._ Best case? _Lots of them die. _Agreed.' I smiled in anticipation.

When the trap opened the first thing we heard was an explosion, definitely the twins' work.

Fishlegs ushered Meatlug to take off. Tuffnut shouted "SURPRISE! YEAH!" and when we left the trap I realized that our traps had actually been very close to each other the whole time. I looked around for Stormfly who actually had left the trap with Eret desperately clinging onto her back. That sight made me laugh and Fishlegs gave a cheer "Woo-oo-oo." We drew close to them and I looked at Eret. "You really are full of surprises!" With that I jumped onto Stormfly's back, holding onto Eret's back with a single hand. "Let's go!" I shouted and we followed the twins. We decided to take out the remaining traps. Fishlegs and Snotlout got to work seperately, while Eret and I executed a combination attack with the twins. Barf breathed his flammable gas onto a whole line of traps. We came from the other direction and ignited the gas, activating a chain reaction of explosions. The dragons were fireproof, of course. The traps? Not so much. The trapped reptiles were able to free themselves from the damaged restraints and took off to join the fray. Again Drago's voice echoed across the battlefield "Cut them down!" Half a dozen weighted nets were aimed at the nearest target, Barf &amp; Belch. The twins did a decent job evading all of them, but Ruffnut lost her balance and plummeted towards the earth. I gasped and was about to usher Stormfly into a steep dive when I saw Meatlug and Hookfang swooping by. Snotlout and Fishlegs each managed to grab one of Ruffnut's arms, carrying her to safety. The delighted grin on Ruffnut's face almost made me gag but as an explosive zoomed by, barely missing us, I focused again. It was tough directing Stormfly with Eret in the driver's seat "Up girl! Lean left, Eret! That's it"

We managed to safely evade all the projectiles, but got dangerously close to a wall of ice. Explosions tore huge chunks of ice out of it and gravity did the rest. I did what I could to help Stormfly evade all of it, but without the synergy between us and the weight of an extra passenger it was for naught.

"Look out!" I cried. And protecting my head with an arm I thought 'This can't be the end. Please, someone... _Hiccup_'

A sudden flash of purple light, another explosion and the ice was blown away. I lifted my arm and beamed at my knight in leather armor. Hiccup and Toothless went into an arch and destroyed one of the slingshots. 'Thank god, he's alive! "_Thank god, he's alive" Ugh, listen to you squeal._ Oh, shut up!'

Some of Drago's men readied their bows and took aim "Take them down!"

Gobber appeared on his Hotburple Grump and they took out the whole lot of them.

Hiccup appeared next to us and lifted his mask, eyes on Eret.

"Welcome aboard, Dragon Rider," he said with a smile.

"Thanks... I think," Eret replied, with a rather shaky voice.

"Where have _you_ been?" I asked, trying to sound at least remotely reproachful.

"Oh, you know. Catching up with Mom."

He looked upwards and while I was sure that I had misheard him, his mother was dead after all, I followed his gaze. My jaw dropped and I gasped in awe. Above the big wall of ice a huge Stormcutter was flying on the spot. On top of it stood a person clad in weird clothing, spear in the air. Even more astonishing was the humongous dragon appearing behind them. It raised its head armed with two huge tusks and gave a fierce roar.

"_That's_ your mother?!" I said in disbelief and glanced at him.

"Well, now you know where I get my dramatic flair!" he replied, flicked down his helmet and broke right.

"Quite the guy," Eret muttered.

"You know... he's starting to look more like a leader."

Eret gave me a quizzical look, but I just chuckled and said "Don't worry about it!"

We resumed the fight and helped wherever we could. Destroying siege weapons, freeing dragons and knocking out as many of Drago's men as possible. In the meantime, though, something big was happening. Drago was madly swinging his spear, his shout even more so. 'Guess he's gone completely insane now.' But I suddenly had some kind of bad foreboding. Stormfly felt it, too, and became quite restless. "Calm down, girl. I'm sure it's nothing..."

Inside the bay, however, this "nothing" turned out to be quite a "something". The really big battleships were pushed around as if they were toys and huge bubbles appeared on the surface. With a fierce roar another Alpha emerged from the sea, it's equally huge tusks casting up waves of several meters height. "Oh god, no!" I gasped and Eret was too stunned to say anything. Drago's Alpha stepped onto the island, crushing friend and foe indiscriminately.

"Come on! Take down the Alpha!" Drago shouted and the humongous dragon actually obeyed his command. The Alphas fought an unbelievable battle, causing deafening sound waves each time they hit each other. The battlefield grew extremely silent, vikings and dragons alike too stunned to continue fighting. It was a short, yet decisive fight. For a while both Alphas seemed evenly matched, but to the horror of us Dragon Riders, Drago's Alpha eventually gained the upper hand. He smashed the white Alpha onto a huge rock, momentarily stunning him, and impaled him with his tusks. He never got up again...

"No," I muttered, too stunned for a more elaborate reaction.

Drago's Alpha gave a victory roar and brought all the dragons he was facing under his control.

I knew that there was nothing we could possibly do, so I just urged Stormfly further away from the Alpha. While hovering in the air I could see that Hiccup stood in front of Drago, frantically talking with him. I knew things were about to go awfully wrong when Drago let out his weird shout again, once more summoning the Alpha to his side.

"Hold on tight, Eret!" I said and was about to usher Stormfly into a steep dive when a whole squad of armored dragons appeared out of nowhere. We were surrounded.

"Damn it!" I cursed.

The Alpha closed in on Hiccup and Toothless and I tried to outmaneuver the dragons in front of us. True they were slower due to their armor, but they were bigger than Stormfly and had a 4 to 1 number advantage. They blocked every single one of our attempts, trying to get their teeth and claws onto Stormfly.

"Time to switch places, Eret," I said and slipped into the saddle. "All right, girl. Let's do this!"

We did a looping, momentarily breaking away from our adversaries. When of them appeared directly in front of us Stormfly shot some of her spikes. Unfortunately they bounced off the armor without any effect. I tried our whole repertoire of strategies for aerial combat, but it was impossible. We just couldn't shake them off. Way down below I could hear Hiccup shout and while I couldn't make out what he shouted, the pitch of his voice froze the blood in my veins. He desperately needed help, _my_ help.

"Dammit! Piss off, already!" I cried with despair, but they obviously did not. Suddenly one of the armored dragons gave a roar of pain and plummeted towards the ground. A powerful blast had ripped his leathery wings. That kind of wound would heal naturally, but he wouldn't reappear for now. "Ruffnut! Tuffnut!"

The twins rode their Hideous Zippleback and fluted in unison "You owe us, Astrid!" Snotlout and Fishlegs joined the fray and with our united strength we managed to incapacitate the armored squad. I looked for Hiccup, but my sight was blocked by the Alpha. When the Alpha turned around and left in an another-job-well-done manner I felt a painful pang in my chest and urged Stormfly to fly as fast as possible.

The six of us landed near Toothless who seemed confused but looked unscathed at least.

'Hiccup should be fine as well, then,' I thought and got off of Stormfly. When I saw him slumped over Stoick who laid awfully motionless on the ground, I gasped and ran towards them.

'He's just unconscious... he's just uncon- _He's dead._ No! Shut up!'

I knelt beside Hiccup, softly placing a hand on his back. No one said a word. It wasn't necessary.

Stoick the Vast, our beloved chief, had died.

Toothless, who until then had kept his distance, slowly approached Stoick's body, pushing the chief's hand with his snout. Hiccup suddenly snapped "No! Get away from him! Go on, get out of here! Get away!" I was shocked to see him like that. 'How can he blame Toothless?' When it dawned upon me I almost started to sob. Drago's Alpha had forced Toothless to kill Stoick...

'That damn _monster_! He will pay for this!' I wiped away some tears and put my head on Hiccup's shoulder, still trying to comfort him. The Alpha gave another victory roar. I only looked up when Drago shouted "Come on! Gather the men and meet me at Berk!" while _riding_ on Toothless.

"TOOTHLESS!" Hiccup cried and tried to get to him. His mother held him back "No, don't."

I hung back, unable to move as I saw my entire world crumble in front of my eyes. Stoick, dead. Stormfly, gone. Berk, done for. I dropped to the ground, weeping freely, an hammering my fists onto the ground. "Dammit all to Hel!"

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**I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter. Please feel free to share your thoughts about this one :) It's greatly appreciated!  
**

**The next chapter will be the grand final, of course and there's probably going to be a whole Epilogue chapter set AFTER the movie ending.**

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	10. The new Alpha

**So here it is! The grand final!**

**I hope you'll enjoy the last chapter of this fanfiction.**

**Please review and tell me you thoughts! It's greatly appreciated!**

**Enjoy~**

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'Worst case, I die?' I thought bitterly. '_This_ is far worse...'

I had busied myself with gathering the material for Stoick's funeral, mainly because I wanted to distract myself, but also to mourn in private. The chief had always been like a father to me and losing him felt exactly like that. The loss of a family member. Tears ran across my cheeks and I compressed my lips in fear of sobbing out loud. I had to be strong for Hiccup, for whom this had to be even worse. That being another reason why I chose to prepare the funeral by myself.

I crossed the battlefield with wobbly knees, collecting intact bows and arrows. Fortunately I also managed to acquire some tar from one of the destroyed battleships. My arms were fully laden when I left the ship, still trying to block out everything around me. Suddenly I cannoned into something and fell down hard, sending the bows and arrows skywards. "Ouch! Watch it!" I shouted in frustration. "Watch out!" a familiar voice retorted. 'Hey, that's _my_ line. Wait... watch _out_?' One of the airborne arrows came rushing towards my face. My body felt paralyzed, unable to dodge. I only managed to utter a short "Oh" before the arrow struck. Or did it? I couldn't feel any pain, nor any wound when I palpated my face. I opened my eyes and saw the arrow's tip, apparently hanging in mid-air, not even a hand's width from my face. The hand holding the the arrow belonged to...

"Hiccup."

"Astrid."

"Thanks, I guess...", I said while he helped me to my feet.

"You guess?"

"Well _you_ crashed into _me_."

"What?! I just saved your life!"

"Oh please, no viking ever died from a single arrow to the face. That could have been a pretty cool scar."

"Fine, next time I won't interfere!"

"Fine!"

We turned our backs on each other and remained silent for brief moment.

"Astrid, what are we doing here?" he asked eventually.

"I don't know," I replied miserably.

Grief turns into anger quite easily, but venting my anger on Hiccup of all people...

I hated myself for it and turned around to apologize and thank him properly, but he beat me to it and put his arms around me. "I'm sorry, Astrid." I started sobbing, pressing my face against his chest.

"I-It's all my fault. I wasn't there to help you, just like back then."

"Astrid, neither my leg nor my father... could have been saved. Toothless sacrificed my leg to save me, and father did the same, by sacrificing himself," he said in tears.

"But why does it have to be you? Losing something or someone dear to you, to protect us."

"Father... Stoick was dear to all of us, wasn't he? And _he_ protected _me_, all of us. I... caused his death..."

"Hiccup, that's not tru-"

"But it is!" he suddenly shouted, pushing me away.

"Why does it have to be me, you ask? That's what I would like to know, for Odin's sake! My father was a hero of Berk, the bravest and most powerful chieftain since my great grandfather. He could have done so much more for the whole tribe. Why? Why did he sacrifice himself for someone like _me_? I'm no good, I doomed Berk by going against my father's orders, thinking I could actually reason with Drago. My arrogance caused my father's death! I wish I had died in his stead..."

I slapped his face, carrying all kinds of emotion on my own.

He simply held his reddened cheek.

"Never, _ever_, say something like that again," I snapped at him. "Do you have the slightest idea how painful it is to hear such words from the person you love?!"

His eyes widened "You... love me?"

I firmly grasped his shoulders "I do. More than anything else in this world. And I need you, _we_ need you. You're the next chief of Berk."

He sighed deeply "I'm... just doubting that I could ever replace my father."

"Truth be told, your impersonation could need a bit more work."

"Ha ha, I'm serious, Astrid."

"That's the point, you're too serious. You don't have to become like your father. Just be the best _you_ can be. You're the chief we need now. And you're not alone. Your mother, your fellow dragon riders, all the Berkians, and I, all of us will stand by your side."

He pulled me into a tight embrace. "Thanks, Astrid," he whispered.

We picked up the bows and arrows and returned to the others, side by side.

"Oh, by the way, please don't mention the 'more than anything in world' part to Stormfly. She's jealous by nature."

"Gotcha," he replied and we shared a heartily laughter.

We stood in a line at the far side of the island, mist drifting all around us. Regrettably we were unable to give Stoick the funeral he'd have deserved. He was laid out on a pyre of wood on top of a small fishing boat. That was all we had managed to obtain on this now desolate island. I had distributed the bows, giving Gobber the bow to hand it over to Hiccup.

The little boat was slowly drifting towards the open sea while we coated our arrows with tar. Gobber delivered the eulogy.

"May the Valkyries welcome you and lead you through Odin's great battlefield. May they sing your name with love and fury so that we may hear it rise from the depths of Valhalla and know that you have taken your rightful place at the table of kings. For a great man has fallen, a warrior, a chieftain, a father, a friend."

After this eulogy, Hiccup ignited the tip of his arrow in the embers of our fire we had prepared beforehand. He pulled back the bowstring, took aim, and fired. My eyes followed the arrow, as did everyone elses, and we saw it struck directly into the pyre. Normally Snotlout would make a joke about that being a one in a million shot for Hiccup. Fortunately he didn't. The arrows ignited the pyre and soon the whole boat was ablaze.

Hiccup stepped forth, struggling for words. "I'm sorry, Dad."

I sighed slightly, holding back my tears for now. The others not so much.

"I'm not the chief that you wanted me to be, and I'm not the peace keeper I thought I was. I don't know…" He stopped.

I was about to step forward, but I refrained from doing so when I saw Valka approaching Hiccup.

She gently stroke his hair.

" You came early into this world, you were such a wee thing. So frail, so fragile, I feared you wouldn't make it. But your father, he never doubted." She now stood in front of him, her arms on his shoulders. "He always said you would become the strongest of them all, and he was right. You have the heart of a chief and the soul of a dragon. Only _you_ can bring our worlds together. _That_ is who you are, son."

Hiccup didn't reply, he simply took a few steps forward, facing a brightly burning pyre that grew ever so smaller on the horizon. He eventually raised his voice once more.

" I, ah... I was so afraid of becoming my dad mostly because I thought I never could. How do you become someone that great, that brave, that selfless? I guess you can only try."

With that said, he turned around, a bright fire of determination burning in his eyes.

"A chief protects his own. We're going back."

I smiled, happy and thankful to see Hiccup being his usual self.

The twins weren't quite so elated.

"Uh, with what?" Tuffnut asked.

"Uh, he took all the dragons," Ruffnut added.

This usually would've been the time for one of my witty retorts, but they had had a point.

But the usual Hiccup wouldn't be the usual Hiccup without a plan in mind. I suddenly remembered the talk I had had with Hiccup so many years ago.

"_What are you going to do about it?"_

"_Eh, probably something stupid."_

"_Good. But you've already done that."_

"_Then something crazy!"_

"_That's more like it!"_

This short remembrance made me smile and Hiccup's plan turned out to be _stupid_. _Crazily_ so.

Scuttleclaws look like a cross breed between a Hideous Zippleback and Deadly Nadder. They aren't, of course. These dragons are the problem children amongst the dragons to say the least. They're hyperactive by nature and extremely difficult to control. Adult Scuttleclaws that is. The Babies are...

well, babies. Hiccups plan included riding those Scuttleclaw babies all the way back to Berk. How that's supposed to work with viking heavyweights like Gobber and Fishlegs? While Scuttleclaws may have difficulties to concentrate, when they actually do, they're quite the hardworking type. It also helps that the hyperactivity goes hand in hand with great stamina and speed.

"Gotcha!" Hiccup proclaimed, when he finally had caught the last of the Scuttleclaw babies we'd been chasing for the past hour.

"Easy as stealing pie from a baby," Tuffnut claimed

"But you never managed to actually do that," Ruffnut replied.

"Uh... well they're quite strong those weird little baby fingers."

"Easy, you say?!" Snotlout interjected. "They didn't bite _you_ in the a-"

"ALRIGHT! Spare us, Snotlout!" I droned, silencing the lot of them. "Wait... 1...2...3... we're still short one dragon. There's only 8 of them."

"Leave that to me," Fishlegs said, starting to produce a unique purring noise, which kinda gave me the creeps. After a while another Scuttleclaw baby appeared from behind a rock and cautiously approached the chubby viking.

'Huh, he's knowledgeable, you gotta give him that. _But that purring, gross..._ I know, right?'

"Do you really think we can still catch up to Drago with _these_?" Eret asked with a doubtful look on his face, while some of the Scuttleclaw babies chased Snotlout's behind and others chased Fishlegs, obviously thinking he was their mother.

I chuckled "Oh, we're used to deal with those id- ah, you mean the dragons. Hm, what do you think, _chief_?"

"No need to call me chief, Astrid. Especially not in that tone."

"Whatever you say, _chief_." What? I simply loved teasing him.

He sighed.

"We should be fine if we don't take any breaks. Remember, Drago moves with his whole fleet. They won't reach Berk before dawn."

Valka appeared next to Hiccup and put her arm on his shoulder "And I know a shortcut."

As is turned out, riding the Scuttleclaws was a lot harder than I'd imagined. The most proficient dragon riders amongst us, that being Hiccup, Valka and me, had a lot less trouble than the rest of our group, though.

"FLY STRAIGHT, WILL YA?!" Ruffnut shouted.

Fishlegs was even more desperate "I DON'T WANNA DIE!"

"We can't fly these things!" Tuffnut added.

"Yeah, no kidding!" Fishlegs agreed, while crashing through a snow pile.

'Serves them right,' I thought 'that's what you get for skipping my training.'

I think I did feel somewhat sorry for Eret, but he seemed to have fun even while barely holding onto his Scuttleclaw. And I honestly felt sorry for the babies that had to carry Gobber and Fishlegs. With their bulky builds they looked like flying meatballs. Valka's shortcut turned out to be an underground ice cave, created by the late alpha, for emergency escapes. By choosing this route we avoided battling against the wind above the sea. This would save us quite a bit of time and the Scuttleclaws could preserve their stamina. What no one really dared to ask was just how we were supposed to fight Drago. Certainly not on the back of baby dragons, right?

"Umm, Hiccup?"

"Don't worry, we'll be fine."

"But won't that Bewilderbeast just take control of these guys, too?"

Valka had named that species Bewilderbeast, because of their ability to bewilder and control other dragons, so we went with that name.

"They're babies! They don't listen to anyone!"

"Yeah, just like us!" Tuffnut interjected, causing me to sigh 'Duh.'

"This is very dangerous!" Gobber shouted, crashing into the ice more than once. "Some might suggest this is poorly conceived."

I giggled 'It's one of Hiccup's plans after all. What did you expect?'"

"Well it's a good thing that I never listen!" Hiccup replied.

"So..."

"what is your..."

"plan?" Gobber asked, interjecting while crossing another wall of ice.

"Get Toothless back and kick Drago's a-"

"Alright, that's the second time!" I quickly shouted.

"Heads up!" I heard Gobber warn, followed by a crunching noise that hurt just by hearing it.

When we reached Berk, dawn had already broken and an unwelcoming sight was greeting us. The village had taken heavy damage already, huge chunks of ice roughly covering one third of it. Drago's Bewilderbeast stood in the sea, leaning against the coast with its forelegs. Hundreds of dragons where flying circles above it head, obviously under his control.

"No..." Hiccup whispered, while Fishlegs stated the obvious "He took all the dragons!"

Our new chief gave orders for the first time.

"Distract the Alpha! Try to keep his focus off of Toothless!"

"Ah, how?" Tuffnut asked.

I sure didn't expect Eret to speak up, but he did.

"Have forgotten who you're riding with? There isn't a dragon alive that I can't wrangle!" Just in this moment his Scuttleclaw decided to take a dive. "Ahh! Except for this one!"

"Amateur," Snotlout said with a smug look on his face.

'Oh please, you're one to talk.'

We headed for the village center and quickly decided on different roles. Valka would observe Hiccup's fight and assist him if necessary. Fishlegs manned the giant horn we used during our dragon races and er... emergencies, of course. The twins, Snotlout and Eret headed for the sheep slingshot. And me? I took care of the wounded and old ones. 'I really hate flipping coins!'

I tried to keep at least one of my eyes on Hiccup. So far he was still hovering in mid air, close to Drago and apparently talking to Toothless. The Bewilderbeast didn't interfere, mostly because it got distracted by flying sheep and the sounding of a big horn, which it eventually destroyed., but also because Drago seemed to doubt Hiccup's abilities. 'You're so gonna regret that,' I thought while carrying a bunch of kids towards the great hall. "Ey! No biting!"

A few moments later I saw Hiccup rushing past us while riding Toothless. 'Great, he did it!'

"Take him down, babe!" '_Babe? Really?_ Shut up.'

What happened next was 100% Hiccup. He tricked Drago with his flying suit and used his unique sword to spread Zippleback gas on Drago and the Bewilderbeast. An explosion ensued that sent Drago flying, knocking him off the alpha. 'Serves him right!'

My gaze wandered and I gasped when I saw Hiccup heading directly towards the alpha's lashing tail 'Not again,' I thought, feeling a weird connection to Hiccup in that very moment.

They somehow managed to evade it with extremely fast and precise movements I didn't think Toothless was capable of. They landed near Drago, who was about to reach for his weapon. Hiccup threw his burning sword to prevent it and stepped forward, completely forgetting about the Bewilderbeast that stood directly behind him.

"Watch out!" I shouted, but he couldn't possibly hear me. I started to run towards him, but once again, I was too late.

The alpha had trapped Hiccup and Toothless in an icy prison. I watched Valka's futile attempt to break the ice with her bare hands, with a horrified look on my face. 'This can't be...'

Tears started welling up, but the disappeared immediately, replaced by astonishment. The big chunk of ice suddenly started glowing blue and exploded only seconds later. Toothless emerged, standing above Hiccup. The both seemed to be unharmed and Toothless was roaring furiously. The fins on his back were glowing blue and he jumped onto a pillar of ice, still roaring at the Bewilderbeast.

"He's challenging the Alpha!" Hiccup shouted.

Toothless fired a series of extremely powerful plasma blasts, knocking the Alpha's head from side to side. When his opponent replied with a swing of his tusks, the Night Fury simply dodged and continued his attack. Toothless eventually returned to Hiccup and Valka, protecting them with his body and roaring at... 'The other dragons?'

And the other dragons seemed to willingly obey, turning their backs on Drago's Bewilderbeast. 'Awesome. He just broke the Alpha's control!' I thought delighted.

Drago was panicking "No, no, no, no! NO! Fight back! Fight! Fight! What's the matter with you?!"

All of us, including our dragons, assembled behind Toothless and Hiccup. This was our home, and we would definitely protect it. Hiccup mounted Toothless and they climbed another pillar of ice.

"Now do you get it? This is what it is to earn a dragon's loyalty. Let this end. Now." Hiccup proposed in a calm and collected way. 'Geez, my yak boy became such a show-off,' I thought with an amused smile on my face.

Apparently Drago wasn't about to let it end yet, though. "Never! Come on!"

The Bewilderbeast readied itself for another attack, but Toothless was faster. He roared and fired a single plasma blast. All of the dragons followed suit, bombarding the Bewilderbeast and Drago with a fiery volley. 'Yeah, go get em!'

Toothless' last attack broke one of the Bewilderbeasts tusks. The huge dragon backed down, a mixture of fear and respect in his gaze. Toothless gave a series of roars and eventually the Alpha bowed, accepting defeat.

"The Alpha protects them all!" Hiccup said.

The Bewilderbeast dove into the sea, taking Drago Bludvist with it. He did not resurface that day. Nor on any other day since then. But back then I had a feeling that he didn't die.

In the aftermath of the battle, the dragons bowed to Toothless, their new Alpha, and roared in unison.

Hiccup hugged his scaly friend "You never cease to amaze me, bud. Thank you!". This earned him a slobbering from Toothless to everyone's amusement.

"Oh, Toothless, you know that doesn't wash out!"

I was preoccupied with hugging my own dragon "Stormfly!"

Dragons and riders reunited and I stepped towards Hiccup just as his mother said "And here I'll stay."

"See? I told you it was in here," I said, briefly putting my hand on his chest, before pushing the button on his suit to open the fin on his back. I laughed away all the sorrow and grief that had built up over the last few hours, elated that we had managed to get rid of Berk's biggest threat. For now at least. Hiccup wasn't amused

"Ah-ha, still doing that one. That's hilarious."

I gave him a "you bet it is" look, still laughing.

"Come here, you," he said, suddenly pulling me in for a kiss. Needless to say that was our best one so far.

The village eldest, Gothi, appeared behind Hiccup, gesturing him to kneel. Her hand crossed a burnt piece of wood and she used the ash to draw the Chieftain's symbol on Hiccup's forehead. Berk's new chief got up and briefly glanced at Gobber, who spread his arms wide and proclaimed

"The Chief has come home!"

All of us broke out in cheers and some of the vikings started chanting "Long live Chief Hiccup! Long live the Chief! Long live the Chief! Long live the Chief! Long live the Chief!"

Even the dragons joined in by firing into the sky.

"Long live the Chief," I said smiling and hugged him tightly.

The following weeks were busy ones. We repaired the village, trained the dragons Drago had brought under his control and even erected a monument. Stoick's legacy.

"This is Berk," I said in my best Hiccup impersonation. " A bit trampled, busted and covered in ice, but it's home. It's _our_ home. Those who attacked us are relentless and crazy. But those who _stopped_ them, oh, even more so! We may be small in numbers, but we stand for something bigger than anything the world can pit against us. We are the voice of peace, and bit by bit, we will change this world. You see, we have something they don't. Oh, sure, they have armies, and they have armadas... but we... we have... **OUR DRAGONS!**"

I chuckled and closed the book. When I leaned back on my chair, arms crossed behind my head, I looked right into Hiccup's face. I gave a shriek of surprise and toppled over.

"Ouch, damn it, Hiccup. Don't sneak up on me like that!"

He helped me to my feet, a stern look on his face. "Didn't you promise not toread in my diary?"

I grinned guiltily. "Whoops? But hey, you gotta admit your latest entry has..."

"Lemme guess," he interjected, "a dramatic flair?"

We laughed heartily, simply enjoying each others presence for a while.

"You know, I'm still waiting," I said eventually.

"What for?" he asked, sounding completely serious, which earned him a punch on the shoulder.

"Ow! I'm kidding, I'm kidding..."

"You better be!" I retorted.

"Truth is, I did, do and will always love you, Astrid."

"Th-That's unfair..." I half laughed, half sobbed, "why do you always get all the cool lines?"

We both leaned in for a kiss, but before our lips could met Toothless barged into the room, cleanly knocking us down.

"Ugh, some things never change!" Hiccup said.

"Thank the gods!" I laughed, climbed over Toothless, who was lying between us, and pounced on Hiccup, covering him with kisses.

"Oh, Astrid, you know that doesn't wash out!"

* * *

**And that's it. I'd like to thank everyone who supported me during this past year by reading, reviewing, following and favoring this fanfiction. I wouldn't have managed to finish it without you guys :) Thank you very much!**

**I also would like you for another favor. Please review or message me and tell me your answers to the following questions.**

**1\. Did you enjoy reading HTTYD 2: Starring Astrid Hofferson ?**

**2\. Would you like to read a whole epilogue chapter for this fanfic, set after the end of the movie?**

**3\. Would you be interested in further installments of "Starring Astrid Hofferson"? e.g. TV series, short films**

**Thanks a whole lot in advance!**

**P.S. Also make sure to check out my new fanfic "Two Of A Kind" ;)**


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